Disabling Duplicate Selected

Flow Production Tracking
1

Is there a permissions setting to disable the ‘Duplicate Selected’ option in the right-click menu?

2 Likes
2

Right now, there’s not an option to disable the duplicate functionality in Shotgun. What’s the workflow you’re trying to support (or not support :wink: )

1 Like
3

Hi Mason,

If a Role has permission to “Create” a given Entity, then the Duplicate Selected option is available in the right-click menu.

Duplicate Selected as a right-click menu option is a problem.

Scenario:

  • A senior asset artist has been told they need to work on a new Asset. - But they can’t work on that Asset until it exists in Shotgun due to a Task environment management tool.
  • Production staff have not yet created the Asset entity in Shotgun.
  • The Sr. Artist Role has the ability to create Asset Entities
    (Shotgun support staff have suggested to allow more permission than necessary, removing permissions as things present as problems)
    • We want to allow this for the situations where an assets artist does know the safe way to create a new asset using the + Asset button.
  • The artist then chooses to Duplicate Selected on an asset they’re familiar with rather than using the + Asset button (because they may be unaware of the implications of their actions)
  • A new Asset Entity is created.

Problems incurred by the above scenario:

  • The new Entity will have an assigned code field: AssetName (Copy) by default.
    • If folder creation triggers are in place (whether by Webhooks, or by Shotgun Event Daemons), this creates a series of related folders on the network. - These “junk” folders may have unacceptable or disallowed characters in the filepaths, and are unnecessarily taxing on the hardware.
  • Triggers for Entity “Creation” will only trigger on the duplication (EventLogEntry metadata "in_create" : True), not on the rename to the appropriate name as a followup step (which would register as a field update).
  • If any of the linked or related Entities on the duplicated Entity are not set to be “Created” by that Role, then the duplication of the Entity will fail - leaving the web UI in a non-responsive state.
    (This will also not duplicate the base Entity)
  • For Assets: If a generic Asset Entity has multi-entity links to multiple shots, then all the connections to those “Related Shots” are also duplicated. - This has the certainty to affect Asset membership and inclusion for other Pipeline / Production tools which deal with Rig referencing / imported assets / ingested products / QA tools, etc.

I’m sure there are more issues and implications which I have not considered yet.

Suggestions:

  • Provide a Permissions-People setting to remove the right-click menu for Duplicate Selected
  • Change the functionality of Duplicate Selected so that it presents the user with an Entity creation interface with filled-in fields taken from the original Entity so that the user is aware of the field population.

I hope this characterizes some potential workflow issues.

Cheers,
David

1 Like
4

Thank you @Mason / @shotgunSupport for the dialogue concerning this topic.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to disable the ‘Duplicate Selected’ option per Permission Group. … we have no plans in the short-term to dive into this area of Shotgun.

The Duplicate Selected functionality is considered a globally available option so long as the user Role is permitted to Create that Entity type.

When asked about the reasoning behind this decision:

No specific reasoning, just that we didn’t hear these use-cases when the functionality was developed (many moons ago) so the extra controls weren’t included.

In an effort to save Artists / Production staff from this “feature” - I propose that the only workaround currently available is such:

  • Turn off primary Entity creation for all Roles (effectively disabling the right-click menu for duplicate selected)
  • Build a framework of Action Menu Item(s) for Create: Asset, Shot, Episode, Playlist, Project, etc. (made available to the Roles who previously had the ability to create those Entities)
  • Build an additional Action Menu Item which could then be exposed to select Roles to permit “safe duplication” of selected entities.

This seems to be a lot of work prescribed to the tech team in order to appropriately respond to the situation. - It is also very opaque and disconnected from the “Permissions” of a Role, so future maintenance of the system could be a challenge.

This would also circumvent the most effective feature of Shotgun’s web UI - The Creation Template Form

From reading [this] post, …the first thing I’d suggest would be to attempt to train your users to not use the ‘Duplicate’ function. …the suggestions [above] would work, although as you point out, that’s a fair bit of work.

As a follow up, I will be bringing this issue to the Product Team through the roadmap. - If this is affecting you as well, I suggest chiming in on the suggestion to help promote it. (link to follow)

If anyone is aware of a more suitable method or approach to this issue, I would love to hear it!

5

Hi,
we have a fairly advanced multithreaded event listener running which is taking care of e.g. entity validation and automated entity connections. Those automatically duplicated entities via the context menu are not only breaking some of our plugins but funilly the internal entity validation of Flow as well (if you dont allow spaces in names).

+1 for either adding the permission options or for a dialog that asks the user for adjustments at duplication (like David suggested).

Is there any progress on this or news?
Could not find an up to date roadmap page to check if thats already in there.

Best,
Tobi

6

In this case it might be better to take over the entity creation form yourself (via AMI)?