User-level (and persisted) Web UI configuration

[pykenny]

TL;DR: Looking up possibility of introducing user-level Web-UI configuration in future release.

Recently I was checking out the idea behind the option to hide datasets (will be "assets" in 3.x) in graph view, which is introduced in 2.10:

• Add option to hide Datasets in Graph View #41003

I'm having similar trouble when looking up several DAGs I'm working with. Having the option available is helpful for searching in the graph view, but now I have to toggle them each time I reenter the graph view of these DAGs. From the original proposal adding global configuration to set up default behavior was another possible approach, but doing that globally comes up with another issue: what if my coworkers doesn't think so? Maybe they don't work on DAGs with huge amount of datasets that often, and feel dataset links pretty helpful when looking up other graphs? Users may have different view on this subject, and that's why I think some of the Web UI display options that are currently global settings for administrators should be opened to users for customization.

Another case I can think of which requires user-level customization is default behavior when entering homepage (/home) of web UI. By default Airflow (2) seems to memorize tab/filters in user session, and let users start from where they ended up with. I feel that disturbing because seeing "All" or "Active" tab with all filters clear on the DAGs view makes much more sense to me when I enter the homepage fresh on the next workday, instead of seeing just 1-2 DAGs remain, feeling very surprised and having to tell myself always remember to reset tab/filters (or, log out !?) when closing the tab. Again, perhaps most Airflow users, including my coworkers, feel more natural about that and don't think that annoying at all!

(I haven't tried 3.0alpha yet. A new homepage is introduced to the new UI so might not be the case as for 3.x:)

• AIP-38 Create new designs for Airflow 3 #42371

Up to now, Airflow 2 offers (at least, maybe?) three potential ways to customize UI behavior:

• Global configuration, which applies to all users directly
• Session-based user state, which doesn't persist in user account, or to say not available through API/Backbone DB
• Browser-based user state using local storage, such as timezone settings. It's not persisted in user account and can be erased at any moment (for instance, now Safari clears off local storage that's unused over a week).

And user configuration page allows customizing two settings (/users/userinfo) and nothing else if one's not in "Admin" role:

• Displayed name
• Password

(This issue may be related, but seems that work on the main profile page haven't started yet)

• AIP-38 | User profile settings #42821

Hence I think making part of the Web UI settings adjustable/customizable at user account level, and persist these settings through API/Backbone DB may help improving user experience on Web UI usage, and getting more consistent experience when some global UI configuration change is made by service administrators. Any thoughts on this topic? And will that be an upcoming feature on 3.0's roadmap?

(Update) Not directly related, but allowing users to persist and manage bookmarks/collections for quick DAGs filtering, other than offering "most recent-" suggestion, or relying on browser's bookmark utility, should be helpful:

• Add ability to pin Airflow Variable(s)/Connection(s) in the UI #36754