Preparing your Pull Request for Platform Review

Last Updated: June 5, 2025

As you develop new applications and features on VA.gov you will need to have your code reviewed by Platform engineers. This helps ensure quality and stable work is being produced. This page provides the steps for preparing a pull request for Platform review.

Prepare your Pull Request for Platform Review

Below are some tactics for ensuring your pull request is reviewed in a timely manner.

Deadline Planning

Ensure that you have planned enough time to meet your deadlines and have accounted for the review time in that timeline (maximum of 3 business days to review a PR)

Note: We cannot guarantee a PR can be pushed through due to lack of planning.

Requirements for Review

A Pull Request will not be added to the review queue until all criteria below is met:

1. A team member is required to review and approve your pull request

2. All required checks need to pass

   1. If you are having trouble passing your checks, Platform Support can help

3. The Platform Support Team cannot see Jira tickets

   1. You need to put your Jira information in the PR body in the form of a screenshot, by copying and pasting the info, or by making a GitHub issue to link

Note: If you have not met these requirements, there may be a delay in the review of your PR.

How to get your PR reviewed by Platform

1. Create a Draft pull request and have your team review it.

2. Resolve issues flagged by automated code checks. Unresolved issues may block your code from being merged.

3. Once a peer has reviewed your code, mark your pull request as Ready for Review and wait for a Platform engineer to review your code. (Code is reviewed within 3 business days.)
   Note: For frontend PRs, the additional automated checks can trigger a review from the frontend-review-group, even for code owners. For backend PRs, see Vets API PR tips.

4. Resolve all review comments from the Platform engineer.
   Note: Once the Pull Request is resubmitted with changes, 3 business day time period restarts.

5. Merge PR into main branch for deployment.

If your team is using code owners, your code goes through automated checks, but might not be reviewed by a Platform engineer. See How we use GitHub code owners for more information.

What Happens After a Pull Request is Opened

After a PR is set to Ready for Review, it will be added to the PR queue for the respective Community of Practice (i.e. frontend, backend, devops, etc.). The Platform Support Team engineers will periodically check their respective queue and review the PRs set to Ready for Review.

When to Submit a Platform Support Request

Please refrain from submitting a ticket in #vfs-platform-support if your PR has been ready for Platform review (CI passing, teammate reviewed) for less than 3 business days. If your PR is older than 3 business days but does not meet the necessary requirements or has failing checks, the 3 business day period will reset.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in ensuring a smooth review process.

Help and feedback

• Suggest content changes to this page.

• Submit new Platform Website content.

• Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.

• Submit a feature idea to the Platform.