Release Date:
Summary
Stack-596 is a focused release spanning three strategic themes: improving the data curation experience in Curator, advancing Synapse's search infrastructure reliability, and laying groundwork for AI-assisted data workflows. Altogether, 4 tickets were completed across the Synapse Platform (PLFM) and Synapse Web Client (SWC) projects.
The most visible change for day-to-day users is a Curator improvement that makes the upsert key column clearly identifiable in record set tables. On the platform side, two bugs in the OpenSearch portal search infrastructure were resolved — one that could cause search index builds to fail entirely under load, and one that prevented certain project members from configuring search settings they were legitimately authorized to manage. The release also includes foundational design work for an AI-assisted sample sheet generation tool, and delivery of a new service enabling researchers to link external identity providers (such as NIH RAS) to their Synapse accounts.
No breaking changes or required user actions in this release. All changes are additive or internal fixes. The search infrastructure improvements are not yet user-facing.
Affected Users & Systems
|
Who / What |
Impact |
|---|---|
|
Data contributors using Curator (especially HTAN) |
Upsert key column is now clearly labeled and pinned for easier CSV uploads |
|
Project members with inherited permissions |
Search configuration binding now correctly respects inherited access — previously resulted in an erroneous access denied error |
|
Portal teams & platform engineers |
OpenSearch indexing is more resilient under capacity spikes; no end-user search experience changes yet |
|
Data managers & DCC teams (future) |
Architectural design for AI-assisted sample sheet generation is now complete; implementation to follow |
Deprecated or Breaking Changes
There are no deprecated or breaking changes in this release. No user action is required.
New Features
New Upsert Key Column Clearly Labeled in Curator Record Sets
When working with record sets in the Synapse Curator tool, data contributors now see a clear visual indicator identifying which column serves as the upsert key — the unique identifier required when uploading or updating data via CSV. The key column is also automatically positioned at the leftmost side of the grid for easy reference.
Previously, contributors had to know the upsert key requirement from external documentation or trial-and-error. This change reduces confusion and upload errors, particularly for new contributors onboarding to datasets with strict schema requirements.
Who benefits: Data contributors and curators working with record sets in Curator, including HTAN data teams.
Design AI-Assisted Sample Sheet Generation — Architecture Finalized
The technical architecture for an AI-powered sample sheet generation tool has been designed and approved. This future feature will allow data contributors to trigger an intelligent workflow — with a single button click — that reads Synapse project metadata and automatically compiles it into a properly formatted sample sheet ready for downstream bioinformatics pipelines (such as nf-core workflows).
The design covers how the tool will interact with AWS AI services, how it will handle data validation and surface errors to users in plain language, and how the resulting sample sheet will be saved back into Synapse for curation review. Implementation work will follow in upcoming releases.
Who benefits: Data managers and DCC teams who currently build sample sheets manually from Synapse metadata — this will significantly reduce the time and effort required to prepare data for pipeline execution.
Fixes & Improvements
Search Configuration Now Respects Inherited Project Permissions
A permission bug was resolved that caused an "access denied" error when a project member tried to configure search settings on an entity that inherits its access rules from a parent project. Even when the user had full edit rights at the project level, the search configuration endpoint was incorrectly checking only the entity's own permissions rather than the effective inherited permissions — producing a false denial.
This affected teams (such as the NF Open Science Initiative) who manage search indexes for entities that share permissions with their parent project. The fix aligns search configuration authorization with how all other Synapse entity operations handle inherited access.
Who benefits: Project admins and service accounts managing search configurations on entities with inherited permissions.
OpenSearch Index Builds Now Recover Gracefully from Capacity Spikes
A reliability fix was applied to the platform's search indexing pipeline. Previously, if Amazon OpenSearch encountered a temporary capacity limit during a large bulk indexing operation, the entire index build would fail and not recover automatically. The system now correctly identifies this condition as temporary and retries the affected documents after a brief delay, rather than treating it as a permanent failure.
This change makes the portal search infrastructure significantly more robust during high-load periods and reduces the risk of search indexes falling out of sync. There is no change to the end-user search experience — this is an internal reliability improvement.
Who benefits: All portal users indirectly benefit from more consistent and reliable search index availability.