You may notice a lot of users in your users lists and metrics that you don't recognize. Typically these users come in from open source libraries they contributed to at some point in the past. Since Flow tracks the origin user of each line of code and looks at all historical data, adding a third party library imports those users too. They generally don’t appear in your reports since they’re not members of teams and are mostly involved in historical data. These users can safely be excluded or hidden from Flow.
Note: Users who are not part of your organization and who were imported with an open source repo do not have access to your instance or data. Users must be assigned a login before having access to Flow. Hiding users does not delete them.
Who can use this?
| Core | Plus | ||
| ✓ | ✓ |
How to manage active versus inactive contributors
When you import a repo, all users who contributed to that repo are imported. Some of these users may no longer actively contribute to that repo. We recommend you exclude or hide the inactive users. To do so, first identify active and inactive users.
Use the Active contributors list to gain insight into current organizational users. This list shows all users with commit or PR activity in the past 90 days. To see Active contributors:
- Click Settings in the top navigation.
- On the left navigation, click Users.
- In the Quick filters section, click Active contributors.
Make sure your Active contributors are part of your organization and on teams.
Next, use the users list to find the users you want to exclude or hide.
Should I exclude or hide users?
Exclude or hide users based on the type of user and the information you want to see about them.
| Which users? | What happens? | |
|---|---|---|
| Exclude |
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| Hide |
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Note: Make sure to hide users who previously had access to Flow but have since left your organization so they are unable to log into Flow. If you decide to exclude them instead of hiding them, make sure to disable their Flow access as well.
When to exclude users
Exclude users from your reports so you only see your team. Learn more about the data associated with these non-organization users in the API Guide: how to locate unknown users in your data.
Excluding users removes those users’ metrics from metrics and reports. Users who don’t contribute code or PR activity often may skew the team’s metrics. Excluding those users allows you to capture more accurate metrics for the team.
For example, you may have engineering managers, directors, or scrum masters assigned to your team to access the team’s metrics. You may also have QA engineers commenting on tickets and PRs, but not contributing much code or being assigned tickets you want to track. Excluding them from metrics will prevent them from distorting the metrics for the team.
Learn more about excluding users from reports.
When to hide users
Users who are not part of your organization or who left your organization more than 12 months ago may be imported when you import an open source repo. The Hidden users feature allows leaders to hide these users. Hiding users removes them from the team list and excludes those users’ data from the metrics. This keeps your focus on the users who are part of your organization.
Once a user is hidden, they will be hidden from the User list, removed from all teams, have a badge on their user detail page, and have their data excluded from metrics. You can hide and unhide users from their User detail page.
Note: Hiding users excludes those users from the historical metrics.
Learn more about hidden users.
If you need help, please contact Pluralsight Support.