Improve Web Asset Server Connection Handling and UI Transparency

[grantfitzsimmons]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When the web asset server goes down, Specify 7 disables or hides attachments-related features (the "Attachments" tab disappears, and related buttons are greyed out, see #4220). However, when the web asset server comes back up, the web app does not automatically re-establish the connection or re-enable these features—the only workaround is to restart the site containers. This leads to poor user experience and confusion. Hiding the Attachments tab entirely when the asset server is down is also not transparent for users.

Describe the solution you'd like

• Specify should regularly poll the health/status of the web asset server and automatically restore related features when the service is available again, without requiring a restart.
• When the web asset server is down, we should keep the Attachments tab visible but disabled, with a message explaining the outage when clicked.
  • Display clear user-facing feedback when the asset server is down and when it is restored.
• Related buttons should display tooltips or messages indicating why they are disabled.
• Log connection loss and restoration events in the container logs with timestamps.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Manual page or container restarts (current workaround, poor user experience).
• Hiding the Attachments tab completely (current behavior, but not transparent to users, does not self-recover).

Reported By
Fedor at Natural History Museum of Denmark on the Speciforum

Additional context
Related GitHub issue: #6766

[specifysoftware]

This issue has been mentioned on Specify Community Forum. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.specifysoftware.org/t/specify7-web-app-does-not-reestablish-connection-to-web-asset-server/2689/2