Add Private Service Connect & rework login info

[nrichers]

Internal Notes for Reviewers

Highlights of this PR:

Private Service Connect

• Added topic for configuring Google Cloud Private Service Connect:

  

_variables.yml

To reflect that there are now multiple production login URLs:

• Split vm_url into vm_url_us1 and vm_url_ca1.

  Before	After
  vm_url: "https://app.prod.validmind.ai"	vm_url_us1: "https://app.prod.validmind.ai" vm_url_ca1: "https://app.ca1.validmind.ai"

• Removed vm_login variable as no longer applicable in a multi-production sites world

Step 1 in task topics

To enable a log in step at the beginning of task topics that works for multiple production URLs:

• Re-added login topic, now updated with info about public and private URL info about accessing the ValidMind Platform UI

  

• Replaced step 1 in task topics with login link to point to login topic instead of platform UI URL

  Before	After

CTAs, training, and other links

• Updated signup CTAs to use new vm_url_us1 variable (it's the same URL we've always sent people to)
• Updated training overview to use vm_url_us1 (training modules are unchanged and use HTML links that point to the same URL)
• Updated release notes links to use vm_url_us1 as the default

Stale content

In an effort not to maintain content that is defunct:

• Deleted the old guide/get-started-sandbox.qmd file as it's been superseded by our ValidMind Academy content
• Deleted the defunct site-unused/qmd/get-started-closed-beta.qmd file as we're done with the beta now

Open items

• As an experiment, is there a step 1 option that feels more elegant? >>> TO BE MOVED INTO A SEPARATE PR

  With Nutshell, via a single-sourced step-1.qmd:

  

  Notes

  • This single-sourced step cannot start with _ or the extension does not work, meaning there will be a separate step-1.html output topic
  • The Nutshell popups are SLOW
  • The Nutshell info icon text in the top right feels too playful for an enterprise product, might need to hide
  • Some additional styling would be needed for this to look right

  Overall, I'm not sure it's an improvement over linking to the login topic.

  With citationshover: true we could do something like this:

  

  Notes

  • Very fast, clean look
  • Enabled by default, no extension needed
  • Needs the citation text to appear somewhere in a QMD div, which is a problem? We could single-source the text but then would need to embed it

• For links that default to using vm_url_us1, will users be able to log in? Need to verify with Spencer.

External Release Notes

Release Notes

We've introduced support for Google Cloud Private Service Connect for enhanced network security and privacy, in addition to the already existing support for AWS PrivateLink. This service allows private connections between ValidMind and your company network, ensuring secure communication over the Google network without exposing traffic to the public internet. By using private endpoints within your VPC, you can reduce your network's attack surface and maintain traffic privacy. Read more ...

[nibalizer]

Nik and I reviewed this in a meeting and it looks good. Thanks Nik!

[nrichers]

@noosheenv could you review this PR from the angle of 'do the reworked step 1 instructions work and did Nik break anything (again)', please? Spencer already reviewed for technical accuracy.

[nrichers]

Sanity tested these PR changes further:

• Step 1 links work as expected, resolve to the login topic
• CTAs for signup work as expected, resolve to the US1 prod URL
• Training login steps work as expected, resolve to the US1 prod URL

This looks to be OK, merging.