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title: "Workbench 2 migration"
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Copyright (C) The Arvados Authors. All rights reserved.

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-3.0
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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".

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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.

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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:

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Some major improvements of Workbench 2 include:

h2. 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

h2. 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

h2. 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

h2. 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