GitLab SAAS (gitlab.com) User administration/management/migration

Hello,

We are planning to migrate users and data from GitLab Self-Managed to GitLab SAAS soon.

We are currently trying to understand how the user migration/administration/management changes on GitLab SAAS.

There was a little bit of information on the youtube video below posted by GitLab explaining the changes between GitLab Self-Managed vs GitLab SAAS for User administration/management.

Level Up - What options do we have to manage user access on gitlab.com?

There was also a mention in the video about access to the customers portal that was required as one of the prerequisites before moving to GitLab SAAS.

I am still a little confused on how the customers portal plays a role in managing or administering users on GitLab saas.

I would like your help or insights with the User administration/management part on GitLab SAAS.

We have an ongoing ticket with the GitLab support but the information given to us so far hasn’t been very helpful.

I saw some posts on the gitlab forums that are saying that each licensed user on GitLab Self-Managed instance has to self register on GitLab.com (SAAS) and cannot be manually added as done in GitLab Self-Managed.

I was hoping to get some answers from anyone on the forums who went through the process of migrating data and users from GitLab OnPrem to GitLab SAAS.

Thank you for your help and support.

I just received an email from the GitLab sales team that we can’t get access to the customer’s portal as we bought our licenses through a third party re-seller.

@hugoazevedo
@gitlab-greg
@jheimbuck_gl
@slee24
@samdbeckham
@jmeshell
@dnsmichi
@bprescott
@hchouraria
@iwalker

Hi,

in the customer portal you select for how many users you are buying a license and for which top-level group it is. You cannot have more members in the group namespace. If you are used to multiple top-level groups in self-managed, you need to split them (including users) or change to single top-level group. You can then create each current top-level group in self-managed as sub-group in GitLab SaaS.

Basically you are stuck with creating the user in GitLab SaaS again. This can be done as the video described by either each user self-registering, sending e-mail invites or using SAML SSO integration.
From there it is manual permission management on group/sub-group/project level.

Thank you @balonik. We don’t have a login for the customers portal. The sales team at GitLab is saying that since we bought our licenses through a third party reseller, we can’t be given access to the customers portal. So, I am confused how can we manage our users on GitLab SAAS without having access to the customers portal?

I think they mean you don’t have access for your current licenses. I guess nothing stops you from going to the portal and buy new licenses for SaaS.