Wait… We Can Share SAS Model Studio Projects Now in SAS Viya for Learners?!

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Confession time.

When SAS Drive was retired in 2025.03 LTS, I nodded politely and moved on.

“Sure,” I thought. “Content management changes. Makes sense.”

What I didn’t realize was that this change quietly solved one of the biggest pain points students face during group work and hackathons:

“Why can’t we share our SAS Model Studio project with each other?”

It turns out… we can.

And it’s now shockingly simple.

The Backstory | SAS Viya for Learners Sharing

For years, collaborative modeling using SAS Model Studio inside SAS Viya for Learners (VFL) required workarounds:

Rebuilding pipelines on multiple machines
Exporting and re-importing models
Copying logic manually
Dividing work across separate projects

It worked — but it wasn’t ideal.

With 2025.09 LTS, something finally clicked for me.

Wait… we can share Model Studio projects now?

And it’s actually straightforward.

What Changed?

The retirement of SAS Drive represented more than the removal of a separate application. It marked a shift toward a more unified, integrated content system within SAS Viya.

Instead of relying on a distinct “Drive” layer, content is now managed directly within the platform’s folder and permission structure. SAS Model Studio projects are treated as shareable content objects that can:

Be saved in specific folders at creation time
Inherit folder-level permissions
Be shared directly with other users

This means that project collaboration is no longer dependent on indirect workflows. It is built into the environment.

The retirement of SAS Drive did not reduce collaboration — it simplified it.

Why This Matters for Students and Hackathons

If you teach analytics or run student competitions, you’ve likely seen this scenario:

One student builds the pipeline.

The rest of the team cannot access it directly.

Final submissions become a coordination exercise instead of a modeling discussion.

The ability to share a Model Studio project changes that dynamic.

Teams can now:

Work inside the same project (important note: if they are on the same VFL deployment)
View and modify the same pipelines
Compare modeling strategies collaboratively
Document decisions within a shared analytic artifact

This reduces technical friction and shifts focus back to what matters:

Feature engineering
Model selection
Validation discipline
Fairness and interpretability
Communication of results

In short, collaboration becomes intentional rather than improvised.

A Subtle but Important Design Principle

There is also a deeper instructional benefit.

Collaboration in SAS Viya is permission-based, not file-copy-based.

Students are not emailing attachments or duplicating projects. They are learning how shared analytics environments operate:

Content lives in folders.
Access is governed by permissions.
Projects and data are distinct but related assets.

That mirrors modern enterprise data science workflows. From a pedagogical standpoint, that alignment is significant.

A Note on Data Access

Sharing a Model Studio project does not automatically resolve all data considerations. Collaborators must still have appropriate permissions to the underlying CAS tables or libraries used within the project.

However, this distinction is valuable in teaching. It reinforces that analytic logic and data governance are separate layers of a system. Students gain exposure to both.

The “Aha” Moment

I will admit it took me nearly a year after SAS Drive’s retirement to fully recognize this benefit.

Sometimes platform improvements are not flashy new algorithms or dramatic UI redesigns. Sometimes they are architectural refinements that remove friction in subtle but meaningful ways.

The ability to save a Model Studio project in a shared folder and grant direct access to collaborators is one of those refinements. For academic use — especially in team-based learning environments — it is substantial.

Seeing is Believing | What I’ll Walk Through Next

With a focus on enabling teammates to open and work within the same project, I’ll walk through concrete examples below on how to:

Save a SAS Model Studio project in a shared folder
Use the Share functionality to grant collaborator access

If you are teaching with SAS Viya for Learners 2025.09 LTS, running hackathons, or supporting collaborative analytics coursework, I encourage you to explore this workflow.

You may find that one of the quietest platform changes turns out to be one of the most impactful for your students.

SAS Model Studio Project in a Shared Folder

Perhaps your eye also caught this subtle addition to the New Project window in SAS Model Studio:

My Folder remains the default location when creating a project. Without additional administrative setup, this is likely where many projects will continue to live.

However, this can change.

With support from your VFL administrators, shared folders can be created to enable collaborative work across users. For now, simply note that the project location is no longer fixed — it is configurable.

Consider this one of those “Art of the Possible” moments.

Using Share to Grant Collaborator Access

Now let’s move to the key step: sharing the project itself.

Follow these steps to add a teammate as a collaborator:

From the main Projects window, find the project you want to share. I’ll select Customer Churn:

Click the Project Options button to expand the choices:

Zooming in a bit… find Share:

Click Share… then you’ll see:

Here is where you can add collaborators to your project. Again, they need to be on the same VFL deployment… but adding them starts by entering their name into the Names section:

For my example, I’ll add my teammates, Cristina and Rachel. Then I’ll then adjust the permissions so that they Can read and edit. Those cumulative changes to the Share window:

Click Share to lock it in!
Once shared, the project will appear in your teammates’ Model Studio project list.
From there, they can immediately begin contributing to the pipeline. Want proof? Here you go:

At this point, teammates can open and work within the same SAS Model Studio project — leveraging the same data, pipelines, and metadata definitions.

To avoid overwriting each other’s work, it may be helpful for each teammate to build and experiment within their own pipeline.

But I’ll leave that decision to you. 😉

TL;DR

SAS Drive’s retirement (2025.03 LTS) quietly simplified how content is managed and shared in SAS Viya
SAS Model Studio projects can now be saved in shared folders (not just My Folder)
You can use the Share functionality to grant teammates read or edit access to a project
Collaborators can open and work within the same project — no more rebuilding pipelines or copying work
Data access (CAS tables) still requires appropriate permissions, reinforcing real-world governance concepts
This makes team-based learning, hackathons, and collaborative modeling workflows significantly easier

Bottom line:

What used to require workarounds is now built directly into the platform — and it’s a big win for both teaching and teamwork.