[Fleet, Workplace Search] Cannot link directly from unified integrations view to some Workplace Search integrations on less than Platinum license

[yakhinvadim]

Some Workplace Search integrations require at least a Platinum license and are not available otherwise. Linking to them from the unified integrations view does not have a good UX — users get redirected to the Workplace Search connectors page, with this integration in the list, but disabled.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/11838280/137220164-40f23c36-f52c-4367-995c-1a29c5fde1c0.mp4

This can probably be solved on the Workplace Search side with some helper text. But I think it would be better to "fail early" and not send users deep into the app if the integration is not available. I think such integrations should be marked as "Platinum+ license only" in the unified integrations view.

Should we accept the current behavior for 7.16 and address this later?

cc: @alexfrancoeur @mostlyjason @bhuvanaurora @jbynum

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/workplace-search-frontend (Team:WorkplaceSearch)

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/fleet (Team:Fleet)

[alexfrancoeur]

@yakhinvadim this came up today during our sync as a task. Is this something you or the team has bandwidth for in 8.0/8.1?

[yakhinvadim]

Hey @alexfrancoeur. I don't think we have the capacity before 8.0 FF, but 8.1 FF seems realistic. I'll talk to the team about prioritizing this and will get back tomorrow (December 3rd) or next Tuesday (December 7th).

[scottybollinger]

I can't see where a discussion on the solution was had. Would something like this (suggested in the description) suffice for 8.0?

[yakhinvadim]

Sorry for not getting back earlier. I resurfaced this issue and another one to our leads and I expect them to prioritize the work. I don't think a decision has been made yet.

[jonasll]

Thank you all for raising this. I do not personally think License Handling needs to happen at the Integrations page level, if I'm honest. And if it does, it should be a broader conversation across all solutions to determine if (1) license-tied connectors are a thing, and (2) how to tackle it for the broader platform.

Two additional points of context: a) Most connectors have a semi-Platinum requirement (DLP being the main driver) b) We are moving away from having connectors tied to a license (Gmail and Slack are Platinum only not because of the sources but rather because they only operate as Private Sources today, which is going to change)

I consider this a no-op for the time being.

[alexfrancoeur]

I do not personally think License Handling needs to happen at the Integrations page level

For integrations, where would you like to see this happen then? I'm more curious than anything. I had been thinking that if an integration has license dependencies, we need to do a check somewhere and blocking at the integrations browse view feels like an optimal solution for both discoverability and reducing confusion. We will eventually add alerting connectors to this view as well that are tied to licenses. If we agree that the blocking on the browse view is a good UX, we can talk about ownership here. Adding a license check for a card in this view should be relatively trivial to implement.

Adding @clintandrewhall for visibility and any thoughts

[jonasll]

I think that we want these to be mostly responsible for sending people to the right integration or product area, and let those areas handle the very delicate and nuanced topic of license selection and limitations. As mentioned above, every connector on the Enterprise Search has some features tied to various license levels (such as document-level security support), and therefore there is no simple way to communicate or filter on this at the integrations browsing experience level.