Introducing the new Pipeline Launch forms: A leap forward in usability and functionality

At Seqera, we’re committed to listening to our users feedback and continuously improving the Platform to meet your evolving needs. One of the most common feature requests has been to enhance the form submission process, specifically the Pipeline Launch and Relaunch forms. Today, we are excited to introduce the newly redesigned Pipeline Launch forms, marking the first phase in a broader initiative to revamp the entire form submission experience across our platform. This update drastically simplifies interactions in the Seqera Platform, enhancing the day-to-day user experience by addressing known usability issues in our most frequently used forms.

Screen recording of the submission of the popular nf-core rnaseq pipeline, highlighting several features of the new form.

The new Pipeline Launch and Relaunch form will be available to all Cloud users in an upcoming release, but if you are interested in being one of the early adopters, please contact your Seqera Account Executive or send us an email directly.

Why the change?

User experience is at the heart of everything we do. Over time, we've received valuable feedback from our users about the forms on our platform. In particular, we gathered feedback on some of the most frequently used forms: Pipeline Launch, Relaunch and Resume forms. In response, we have made significant enhancements to create a more intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly experience.

Key Objectives

The redesign of the Pipeline Launch and Relaunch forms was guided by four objectives:

Simpler navigation: The new multi-step approach ensures that users can easily navigate through pipeline launch form submissions without unnecessary steps. Key information is stored and grouped logically, allowing users to focus on the essential steps.
Enhanced validation: We've added robust validation features to ensure the accuracy and completeness of submitted information, reducing errors and helping users avoid common pitfalls during pipeline configuration.
Improved clarity: Form content has been updated to be more concise and clear, ensuring users can quickly understand the requirements and options available to them, thus reducing confusion and improving overall efficiency.
Enhanced key components: Key form components have been redesigned to offer a more intuitive user experience. This includes more dynamic control of the configured parameters, the ability to switch between a UI schema view, and interactive JSON and YAML rendering for full control every time a user launches, relaunches or resumes a pipeline.

Enhancements

The redesigned Pipeline Launch and Relaunch forms come with a host of new features designed to improve usability and functionality:

Multi-step approach: Users can now navigate through forms with a streamlined, multi-step approach. If everything is set up correctly, there's no need to go through all steps –simply run what you know works.
Enhanced assistance: We've improved feedback mechanisms to provide detailed information about errors or missing parameters helping users to quickly identify and rectify issues before launching pipelines.
Developer-friendly: Developers can switch between UI schema views and a more comprehensive parameter view using JSON and YAML interactive rendering. This flexibility allows for dynamic control of form validity and ensures that developers have the tools they need to configure their pipelines effectively.
Enhanced rendering: The form now dynamically generates the UI interface for parameter input whenever a compatible schema is defined. This improvement addresses previous limitations where the UI interface was only rendered when launching a saved pipeline, as opposed to relaunching or using Quick Launch. With this update, the UI is rendered consistently across all launching scenarios, providing a more convenient and streamlined experience.
Improved flow and status information: The new design offers a smoother flow and more informative status updates, providing a clear view of the submission process at every stage.
Summary step: A new summary view allows users to review all information at a glance before launching their pipeline.

Summary

By focusing on these key objectives and enhancements, we aimed to improve one of the most commonly performed actions in the Seqera Platform. The redesigned form makes it easier for new and experienced users to run pipelines in the Seqera Platform. This effort is just the beginning of our goal of enhancing the form submission experience across the platform. Moreover, this initial refactor enables us to continue improving and expanding the user experience in the future. You can expect more enhancements as we roll out additional features and improvements based on our community feedback.

Read the official documentation to find out more.