Workbench 2 migration

Arvados is in the process of migrating from the classic web application, referred to as “Workbench 1”, to a completely new web application, referred to as “Workbench 2”.

Workbench 2 is the new Workbench web application that will, over time, replace Workbench 1. Workbench 2 is being built based on user feedback, and it is approaching feature parity with Workbench 1. Workbench 2 has a modern look and feel and offers several advanced features and performance enhancements. Arvados clusters typically have both Workbench applications installed and have a dropdown menu option in the user menu to switch between versions.

Workbench 2 is stable and recommended for general use, but still lacks some features available in the classic Workbench 1 application. When necessary, you can easily switch back:

Some major improvements of Workbench 2 include:

General

  • More responsive, only loads data needed for display
  • More familiar user interface, modeled on the file explorer of MacOS and Windows.
  • Advanced search capabilities

Project browsing

  • Expanded informational columns
  • Expanded filtering options
  • Right side informational panel providing details about selected item without navigating away from the project
  • Support for adding and querying user-supplied metadata properties on Projects

Collection browsing

  • Able to browse collections with millions of files
  • Support for adding and querying user-supplied metadata properties on Collections
  • Support for viewing past versions of a collection

User and Group management

  • Able to create user groups through the GUI
  • Able to add/view/remove members of user groups, and what permissions are shared with the group
  • Able to add/view/remove permissions shared with individual users

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Code samples in this documentation are licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.