Shared WorkBench templates

[grantfitzsimmons]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The current administrative process for managing large-scale data imports is quite painful at CSIRO. We create "master" mapping templates within a central admin account, but sharing these with individual users is a manual, multi-step chore.

Currently, to provide a user with a standard mapping, we have to:

1. Create a second copy of the dataset.
2. Apply the master mapping.
3. Manually change the owner to the target user.

This has to be repeated for every single user and every time a mapping changes. There is no "single source of truth" for upload plans, which leads to version drift and support overhead when users accidentally modify their local mappings.

Describe the solution you'd like

We need a way to push these templates out to all users from an admin account so that changes are automatically inherited.

• Shared Templates Library: When a user creates a new data set or navigates to ⚙︎ Tools > Upload Plan, they should be presented with a list of "Shared Templates" flagged by an administrator.
• The "Shared" Flag: An admin-level user should be able to flag a specific spdataset (WorkBench dataset) as a shared template.
• Read-Only Access: For the end-user, these templates should ideally be read-only to prevent accidental changes to the institutional standard, while still allowing them to be applied to the user's own data.
• JSON Upload Plans: In the upload plan interface, we’d like the option for users to either choose from the template list or paste a JSON upload plan directly.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• URL Sharing: Similar to how we share saved queries, providing a direct link to a WorkBench data set URL that allows a user to "save a copy" of the mapping to their own account.
• Public/Private Toggle: Adding an "is public" checkbox to datasets, though as noted in the development discussion, this requires addressing underlying table permissions.

Reported By
Dan Baker & Anu at CSIRO

---

Our admin process involves creating mapping templates for users in our master account, and currently in order to share that we have to create a second copy, apply the master mapping, then change the owner to pass it on to the users.

Repeating this for each user and for every time the mapping changes takes a lot of work! It would be nice to have a way to push these templates out to all users from our admin account where they are managed, so that any changes to templates are automatically 'transferred' through to the users.

Either having a link that we can share like saved queries, or having a "Shared" folder that we can push templates to would be a good option (based on our other request!).

Somewhat related to #4052, it would be great to have the ability to share these templates with any user in the database.

Having a list of "template" mappings when creating a new data set would be really useful.

Requested By: Dan Baker at CSIRO (Asana)

[grantfitzsimmons]

Requested By: Anu at CSIRO

[grantfitzsimmons]

If this could just be sharable like a query (so anyone can access the WorkBench data set URL and save the data set to their account)

Ideally it would be an option when a new data set is being created

[maxpatiiuk]

I think the fact that we don't have read permissions for the workbench table might make this a bit trickier - unlike with query builder, you won't be able to prevent anonymous users from reading all your datasets (and since dataset id is just a sequential ID, it's quite easy to guess)
and since you can create a data set for a table you don't have permission to (the use case is a person without access preparers the dataset, and then transfers it to a person with a dataset), we couldn't restrict read based on that either

so ideally, we would fix #2813, and as part of that, would add permissions for these tables (including read tables), and then open up data sets a bit more

of course, the current implementation of query sharing is not ideal either, so it could use a bit more brainstorming (#256) (and record sets too)

or more short term, add some sort of "is public" checkbox (which seems like what you are suggesting) (like proposed for queries in #256 (comment))

fun fact: even if you remove every single permission from the user, the workbench is still accessible because we don't have a read permission for it

[grantfitzsimmons]

Trying to help reduce the pain in my PR aimed to solve #1363

[bronwyncombs]

For CSIRO's request, they would like to be able to share the template in bulk, and it should be updated for all accessing users when edited. Ideally, the shared templates would also be read-only.

They would also like this concept implemented for sharing saved queries, which is relevant to #1146