Collections added in Specify 6 are missing important components in 7

[grantfitzsimmons]

Right now users are faced with a challenge: If they want a new collection, they need to add it in Specify 6.

This scenario applies in the following case:

• The user is using 7 primarily
• The user wants adds a new division, discipline, or collection

This is still technically doable, though they will be immediately facing a number of challenges:

• Uniqueness rules will not be added, causing unexpected behavior in Specify 7:
  • Catalog Number will not be enforced unique by default (as of v7.10)
  • Crashes may happen when users save records that have database uniqueness requirements, leading to ugly errors when saving records
    (Preparation → Barcode; Loan Number → Loan; Collection Object Group Join → Collection Object Group)
• New Schema Config records will not be populated
  • This error occurs because the Django migrations that create new SpLocaleContainer records (visible to users in the Schema Config) have not been applied. As a result, users are unable to see and customize the new tables and fields added through Specify 7 that were not present in Specify 6.8.03. This issue can be solved by following this guide (staff only).
• Security & Accounts configuration difficulties
  • Roles and templates will not be auto-populated in new collections
  • Specify 6 permissions will not be automatically converted to permission profiles for those users in Specify 7

Related in large part to the migrations documentation I started October 2024, being discussed again because of the immediate impact it has on users after the v7.10 update is released. As mentioned there:

If additional collections/disciplines/divisions are added to Specify, necessary records are not created (uniqueness rules, schema configuration extensions, user permissions in Specify 7, among others). This means there is no easy way to add collections in Specify 6 and have them be functional in Specify 7. We need to consider this when writing migrations so they are atomized enough to run anytime new collections are added.

If we were to add Django apps that we could instruct IT administrators to run to solve these issues, it would provide a better system for handling cases where users need to add a new collection.

Full Breakdown

You can read more details described here.