[Feature Request] Unify history/workflow uploading with data upload dialog

[hexylena]

I had a user recently ask about how to import a history, they'd tried to upload it and were confused it was buried in a menu, same for workflow imports. And I couldn't understand myself why they were separate forms (other than "it's easy".)

I'd like to propose the following:

• When I upload a history tarball, it's recognised, and imported. There is no other possible reason you're uploading a history tarball.
• When I upload a galaxy workflow, it's recognised and imported. I cannot think of a good reason someone would want to run tools on a workflow.
• When I paste in the URL to a workflow, or history on some ftp/http server...
• When I paste in the URL to a public view of a history or workflow, e.g. https://usegalaxy.eu/u/wolfgang-maier/w/covid19-variation-analysis-on-artic-pe-data import the workflow. (maybe embed metadata it? like we do with schemas.org metadata?)

[innovate-invent]

I am not sure I agree with mixing the workflow and data upload dialog. That would have some behind the scenes magic that would cause the upload to not appear in the history if it is detected as a workflow. This would cause me some confusion if I did not realize to go and look in the workflows menu.

Uploading a history tarball would make sense if it was set and displayed as the active history after uploading.

[hexylena]

Is anyone uploading a workflow without knowing what a workflow is? (But I agree in principle, that the "disappearing" is confusing. Could be addressed with something like #2324) But the current history import process is no better, you import a history and maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails in the background, who knows.

Or maybe if it was one "import" dialog, we could at least have a unified importing place that would allow importing multiple things at once, and tracking their progress (for histories.) I find myself a bit frustrated by having to do imports one at a time.

And for history tarball, I want to upload multiple potentially, not just one. Especially for users transferring data between servers, it would be a nicer UX.

[hexylena]

Now that we have a notification system this continues to make more sense

I want to open the upload dialog, paste in some URLs like:

https://usegalaxy.eu/u/papocristoferi/w/1st-workflow-by-covid
https://usegalaxy.eu/u/papocristoferi/h/by-covid-mirna-counts
https://example.com/robots.txt

and have the workflow be imported, a notification generated "we've imported your workflow!", the history imported, notification generated. And the dataset added to my current history.

it'd resolve a lot of user confusion around exporting if you could just .. import from a public history/wf URL.

[nomadscientist]

Ahhh the "maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails" history export has hit me so many times, my whole group gave up on preparing our tutorials for ORG and AU servers. I think it's better now, having tried it for the first time in a while yesterday.

I would just like to echo @hexylena 's points. This is a feature that could support us a LOT. Given how hard it is to initially train users to just learn how to share their histories via a link, pointing out yet another place with scary words like RO-Crate to create, essentially, a different link to export their history with, is really tough.

And by extension, normally if you are exporting a history, you will export multiple and workflow(s) at the same time. I can't think of any time when I wanted to export that I only wanted to export one thing. This idea of copy paste, then, would be super helpful.