Project drafts

Project drafts are a way to test or propose changes to your Hashboard project safely. Drafted resources can be created, updated, and deleted, and can be applied to your project in a single operation.

Creating a project draft

Project drafts live in the Project drafts page (opens in a new tab) within a Hashboard project.

To create a project draft, click the New draft button. You will be navigated into a new draft titled [Your name]'s project draft.

While in a project draft, you'll see an orange button at the top of the page with the name of the draft. This means you're safe to interact with the project and make changes to resources, knowing that they will not be applied to your project until you're ready.

Clicking that button will navigate you out of the draft and into the draft details page. On the draft details page, you can rename the project draft, set its description, see resources that the draft has modified, and see the validation status of the draft.

Permissions

Project drafts are public and shared across a project. Any user within a project can enter a draft.

However, certain permissions are required to create, update and apply project drafts:

• To create a new draft, a user must have the CREATE_DRAFT permission.
• To update the resources within a draft, a user must have the UPDATE_DRAFT permission.
• To apply a draft to a project, a user must have the APPLY_DRAFT permission.

While in a draft, users have the same permissions within draft mode as they do when interacting with other project resources. For example, if a user does not have permission to edit a model, they will still not be able to edit a model in a draft.

Resources that can be drafted

The following resources can be created, updated, and deleted within a project draft:

• Data models
• Saved explorations
• Metrics
• Dashboards
• Homepage launchpads

Notably, while in a project draft, you cannot make changes to:

• Data sources
• Collections
• Project settings
• Users and permissions

Validating project drafts

When developing a project draft, it's possible that the draft may enter an invalid state.

Similar to a merge conflict in Git, this can happen if changes are made to the project that are incompatible with the changes in the draft.

You can see the validation status of your draft on that draft details page.

• Warnings do not block the draft from being applied, but should be reviewed.
• Errors block the draft from being applied. This typically means that there is a resource within the draft that has a critical dependency that cannot be resolved – for example, a drafted saved exploration that references a model that has been trashed within the base project.
• No errors or warnings means that the draft is in a valid state and can be applied to the project.

Applying project drafts

When you're ready to apply your project draft to your project, click the Apply button.

If there are no validation errors, you will see a list of resources being changed. Review these changes carefully, as it is possible for changes within the draft to propagate and create additional changes to resources in the project. If new changes are present, they will be marked with a red warning icon.

After clicking the Apply button, the draft will be applied to your project, and your drafted changes will be merged into your project. A green checkmark will appear next to the name of the draft to indicate that the application was successful.

If there are validation errors, you have the choice to either go back into the draft and resolve the errors, or start a new draft from scratch.