Indicate what flavour of GitLab you're using: CE or EE

Description

Sometimes GitLab users do not even know are they on CE or on EE. It would be good to add an interface element with will indicate it.

Original suggestion

Design

Add a link to the bottom of the global menu. The link should say About GitLab CE or About GitLab EE depending on version. Clicking this link should take you to /help.

cc @JobV

I'm not sure about the location, but this is not a bad idea @inem. Maybe this could link to our repo's as well.

Added ~123454 label

Added ~19492 label

Milestone changed to %Backlog

Mentioned in issue gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com#691 (closed)

This reminds me a little of #23598 (closed), but I think focusing on the edition might be helpful to users. When users go to 'Help', the first thing they see is the edition and version, but that might not be where people think to go. What if there was just an 'About' link next to our 'Help' link (like many Desktop apps do today). Maybe there is a page this could take you to (on about.gitlab.com?) that makes it clear what version you are on, and what those features are. This page could also be an interesting entry point into understanding what features you are missing, and if they make sense for your org. I'm not sure that this exact page exists today, but we have all of that information there.

@JobV @dimitrieh @tauriedavis Thoughts?

@awhildy nice that you remembered my issue ;)

The only thing here that worries me is, that we perhaps may be misusing the profile dropdown to entertain these kind of options/menu items. I do however think that if we put enough menu items in there it no longer is "just a user profile menu".

We may for example also add keyboard shortcuts from #23400 (moved) & #22389 (moved) (twitter does that as well in their profile dropdown).

This would make the ratio profile related items vs general items more in favor of general items.

I would however by okay with it anyway ;)

It feels slightly out of place to me in the user dropdown because it doesn't feel directly related to the user like the other links do. I like the idea that @blackst0ne had in the previous issue. They placed the information at the bottom of the sidebar. This seems non intrusive and is placed near actions that encompass the different areas of GitLab. It also adds another hint of "global navigation" to the sidebar that we were after when we added "Across GitLab".

i would like to add that version info would be welcome addition, similar to how apple does that with a click:

and just make it Gitlab CE or GitLab EE

this is btw how its displayed on the help page:

I wouldn't hide it too far. The whole initial idea is that it would be better if people knew what edition they are using.

Sometimes people stop at our booth at conferences, and they are not sure what are they using, so you had to ask them a bunch of additional questions to figure that out.

@inem Do you feel the sidebar is hiding it too far? To me, it feels accessible without being in the way. Easy to find, and hide. I dont necessarily think it needs to be on every page, all the time. This way, you can close the sidebar and it's not an extra UI element taking up space in the area you do the most work.

@tauriedavis This is better than nothing :)

Since I am from marketing department, I am also interested to give our users an occasion to learn more about EE. But of course it shouldn't be intrusive. So I leave the final decision to you.

mentioned in issue #14381 (moved)

mentioned in issue #25341 (moved)

I like the idea of adding it to the sidebar as @tauriedavis suggested. What page should this About GitLab CE/About GitLab EE link take you to?

I think it would take you to the about page where it displays the current version and info about it. https://gitlab.com/help

I've updated the description with @tauriedavis's mock. Thanks everyone!

added frontend ~131895 and removed ~19492 labels

mentioned in merge request !8316 (merged)

assigned to @victorwu

changed milestone to %8.16

closed via merge request !8316 (merged)

mentioned in merge request !14785