Find your way around
Nuvolos mirrors the way computational research and teaching projects are organised: Organisations maintain projects, projects consists of various stages of workflows organised in working environments, and working environments consist of files, data, and software applications.
The interface follows that same shape. Nuvolos consists of projects (Spaces), organised into Organisations, and projects contain working environments (Instances), which further have various States, containing files, data and applications.
Once you know the four navigation elements below, you can reach anything in the platform within a few clicks.
This page is a quick tour. For the conceptual model behind the hierarchy, see The hierarchy and resource model. For the role-based view of what you can see and do at each level, see Roles and permissions.
The four navigation elements
Nuvolos provides four ways to move through the platform. You will use all of them, often in combination.
The Dashboard - your starting point after logging in.
The breadcrumbs bar - your position in the hierarchy
The sidebar - actions available in the selected context. You can also change the context using the sidebar.
The Account & Settings menu - your profile, secrets, API keys, and resource monitoring.
The Dashboard
The Dashboard is your starting point after logging in. It shows your recent activity and quick-access cards for your most-used Applications, in the context of the most recent Organisation you worked in.
You can return to the Dashboard at any time by clicking the Nuvolos logo in the top left corner.
The breadcrumbs bar
The breadcrumbs bar at the top of the screen shows your current position in the hierarchy. When viewing an Instance, the breadcrumbs show Organisation → Space → Instance → State.
The sidebar
The sidebar is a constant no matter where you are on Nuvolos. It always shows available actions on the current context level you are on in Nuvolos and also lets you navigate between contexts (such as switching a space, organisation or instance).
Finding what you need
Most navigation in Nuvolos is a matter of selecting the right level in the sidebar. The patterns below cover the common cases.
Finding an Organisation
You can only see Organisations for which you have accepted a valid invitation.
To find an Organisation, navigate first to the dashboard. Click the name of the currently selected organisation, and a filterable menu will appear with all possible choices. Scroll the list, or use the search field to filter. If you cannot find an expected Organisation, confirm that you have accepted the invitation email - see Accepting an invitation.
Finding a Space
You can only see Spaces where you have access to at least one Instance or you are a Space Administrator.
To find a Space:
Make sure you are in the Organisation that contains the space.
On the dashboard, in the Recent spaces menu, you can look at your latest projects, but also search and filter for others.
You can use the Filters icon next to the search bar at the top to filter by Courses, Projects, or Datasets.
To see archived courses or resting projects/datasets, enable the Inactive toggle. These Spaces appear with greyed-out text and are hidden by default.
When you select a Space, Nuvolos automatically opens an Instance for you: if you have access to the Master Instance it opens that, otherwise it opens the first Instance you have editor access to.
Finding an Instance
You can only see Instances where you are an Editor or Viewer, or you can see all Instances if you are a Space Administrator.
To find an Instance:
Navigate to the Organisation and Space in the sidebar or via the dashboard.
In the context of a Space, click the current Instance name to bring out the context switching menu, notified by the
>icon appearing on hover.Filter by name or click View all instances to see the full list.
Finding a State (Snapshot or current state)
States represent points in time status within an Instance. The Current State is the live working version; Snapshots are immutable copies.
To find a state:
Make sure you are in the desired context by navigating to an instance via the sidebar.
In the context of an Instance, click the current Snapshot name to bring out the context switching menu, notified by the
>icon appearing on hover.Click View all snapshots to open the full snapshot timeline view.
Finding an Application
There are three ways to find an Application, depending on what you remember about it.
If you have used it recently, the Dashboard shows your three most recent Applications.
If it is currently running, click the desktop monitor icon in the top toolbar.
For the full list in an instance, open the Space and Instance and click the Applications icon in the sidebar.
The Account & Settings menu
The Account & Settings menu in the bottom left corner is your control panel for everything that is yours rather than belongs to a particular Nuvolos object. It contains:
Account Settings - profile, environment variables, secrets, SSH keys, API access, Dropbox sync, table access, and Nuvolos Settings (date/time formatting, AI integrations).
Resources - the resource monitoring dashboard, where you can track NCU consumption, storage usage, and Credit balance for the resource pools you have access to.
Tasks
Tasks and notifications are available for review on the bell icon in the top right corner. The menu shows running and recent background tasks (for example, distributions, archive extractions) and pending role requests.
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