Redesign the Upload Experience (Upload Activity)

[davelopez]

Let's use this discussion to gather ideas and feedback for the redesign of the Upload Activity in Galaxy.
A draft PR exploring the redesign is available here: #21338.
This PR will be updated as we incorporate feedback from this thread.

Note

The screenshots below are not final designs. They are early prototypes meant to illustrate concepts and spark discussion.

General Idea

The goal of this redesign is to make the different ways of uploading or importing data into Galaxy easy to discover and understand. Each upload method should be clearly explained, focused on a specific use case, and supported with helpful guidance or documentation. The overall experience should be beginner-friendly without limiting more advanced users.

Prototype

The Upload Activity will include a panel similar to this:

The options shown here—referred to as upload methods—are not final. Agreeing on which methods to include, how to name them, and how to present them is one goal of this discussion.

When uploads are in progress, the panel will display their status and provide controls to manage them (pause, cancel, retry when possible). It will also show any error messages that occur.

Current Ideas

• The available upload methods should be configurable by an admin. This allows each Galaxy instance to show or hide methods based on its capabilities and desired user experience.
• Each upload method will open in the main (center) panel, providing enough space to include helpful context, usage instructions, or links to documentation and tutorials.
• A Guided mode will help users choose the most appropriate upload method for their scenario. This could take the form of a wizard or decision-tree interface.
• An Advanced mode will support complex upload workflows such as composite datasets, rule-based uploads, and other expert-level features.
• Upload methods that support selecting multiple files will offer the option to create a Collection, along with an explanation of what Collections are and how they are used in Galaxy.
• Each upload method will only display the configuration options relevant to it. Features such as deferred uploads should be clearly visible and explained so users can take full advantage of them.
• We should explore whether some tools used to bring data into Galaxy could be surfaced or recommended within this interface.

[davelopez]

Here is a preview screencast of the new redesigned experience for uploading local files:

LocalFileUpload.mp4

You can play around with it in #21338 and provide feedback here if you want.

The rest of the upload options will be based on this design or follow a similar pattern.