Our team released a new version of SciLifeLab Serve that contains a number of highly requested features.

We added support for sharing apps with "Anyone with the link" permissions level. These apps can be opened by anyone who knows the direct URL but are not listed anywhere publicly by us. This option is especially useful for when you want to share the app with reviewers of a manuscript or conference submission but not yet list the app publicly because significant changes can still be made before the final publication.

We also added an interface for file management. Each project created on SciLifeLab Serve has a persistent volume attached to it, a persistent volume can be seen as a folder for data storage. In order to manage files from outside of apps or notebooks we now added a special file management tool that can be activated. It is possible to upload, download, or browse files on the persistent volume using this tool. This tool will be especially useful when an app you want to deploy has large data files that cannot be simply put into the Docker image with the app but need to be uploaded separately and accessed by the app. See the corresponding user documentation page for more on file management.

Finally, another significant addition is support for apps of new type - TissUUmaps apps. TissUUmaps is an open-source browser-based tool for fast visualization and exploration of millions of data points overlaying a tissue sample. Now researchers can create a TissUUmaps app on SciLifeLab Serve and upload their dataset(s) to obtain a unique URL that they can then share with colleagues or in their scientific articles to allow others to explore the data. See an example of a TissUUmaps app or read the corresponding user documentation page about TissUUmaps hosting.

Today we are launching a new interface for SciLifeLab Serve. Over the past months the team has been working on improving the usability and the look of the service. Along with the interface change the team also made a number of significant changes behind the scenes. One of such changes was a database upgrade which means that all users that were registered on SciLifeLab Serve before today will need to create a new password using the 'Reset password' functionality. In addition, we improved and expanded the documentation. If you notice any issues feel free to get in touch with us (serve@scilifelab.se).