🌟 Sleek and Simple: Latest Governance UI Upgrades Are Here! 🌟

Hey there, Governance users!

We're super excited to roll out some cool new updates to our Governance product. This December, we're not just adding fancy features – we're transforming your daily governance tasks to make them smoother, easier, and yes, even a bit more enjoyable. Let's dive into the cool new changes that await you!

1. Your Automations, Neatly Organized! 📂

We know managing a bunch of automations can be overwhelming. So, we've introduced neat new tabs: Active, Pending Activation, and Archived. This means no more sifting through inactive automations to find what you need.
Let these tabs keep your screen tidy and your mind clear. 🧠✨

✅ Active: View and manage automations that are currently in use.

⏳Pending Activation: Keep track of automations that are configured but not yet activated. When you create a new automation and don't turn it on, it lands here!

❌ Archived: Access your inactive automations without cluttering your main screen.

(See our Docs)

2. No Guessing in Automation Setup 🛠️

Setting up automations should be clear and straightforward. To ensure this, we've added clear visual cues: No more wondering if your automation will start immediately after saving. We've made it crystal clear that 'save and continue' means just that.

COMING SOON! Enhanced Automation Summary View 👀

Forget about forgetting! Our upcoming summary page improvements means you won't have to scratch your head trying to recall the details of your automations. This is especially a lifesaver for our governance admins who set and forget their automations. This enhancement will soon allow you to:

✅ See all key details of your automations at a glance.

✅ Better manage and remember your automation settings.

✅ Enjoy a more intuitive interface, particularly beneficial for Core and Premium admins.

🗣️ Your Voice Matters!

Your feedback is what shapes our future updates. We love hearing from you, so let us know what you think about these new features, or any ideas you have for what comes next.

🎁 Cheers to Easier Governing and Happy Holidays! 🎁

The data.world Governance Team

Notable improvements: we're streamlining the user experience.

Release notes: Enjoy an even more nimble and intuitive catalog with our latest UX enhancements. Our aim? To streamline your workflow and cut down on unnecessary clicks, duplicates, and possible errors. Here is a list of some of our latest updates:

Duplicate resource warning: Now, if you're about to create a duplicate resource, an immediate warning pops up in the user interface (UI). Think of it as your very own virtual time-saver, spotting any resource with the same name and type within your catalog and stopping you in your tracks, reducing redundancy and promoting effective use of resources.
Context-rich glossary results: Over on the glossary tab, you'll notice more context-rich results. Icons, type, and collection names now accompany your title and description, making it easier than ever to find, understand and use the terms in your glossary. This offers more context that makes the glossary more engaging and easier to navigate.
Dynamic filtering on the organization page: Say goodbye to typing in your whole query and hitting enter. Enjoy our new dynamic filtering feature for types, glossaries, and collections within an organization page. Say hello to a smart and efficient data catalog experience.

These updates aim to enhance your experience and productivity. For more details and full list of release notes, please visit docs.data.world.

Offline Editing for Columns by Table

Catalog administrators and stewards can now more easily operate on Column resources in bulk with the spreadsheet export/import flow. Previously, Columns could only be selected for bulk operations at the Collection level. Now, users can export all Columns of a parent Table, edit attributes in the spreadsheet, and upload changes.

The new functionality is accessible for users with correct access via the 'Columns' tab on a parent Table's resource page (example shown below).

For more information, please refer to the documentation.

Granular Filtering, Search, and Selection for Bulk Operations

We are thrilled to announce new functionality for the Quick Edit feature to support all of the bulk operations necessary to keep catalogs fresh and accurate.

Previously for Quick Edit, users could only filter a set of resources by Resource Type. But now users can leverage search facets, advanced filtering, and text search capabilities available in other parts of the data.world platform. Users can also perform multiple searches and apply multiple filters to continually add resources to the selection without restarting each time. This will streamline bulk operations by allowing users to more seamlessly select the exact set of resources intended for bulk enrichment and editing.

These capabilities are now available wherever Quick Edit lives: Glossary, Resources, and Collections. They will appear once you select either "Quick Edit" for Glossary, or the "Edit Multiple Resources" entry point for Resources and Collections, shown below:

In a future release, we will enable these capabilities for the Bulk Upload/Edit feature as well, making offline editing more targeted and effective.

For more information, please refer to the documentation for Glossary Quick Edit, Resources Quick Edit, and Collections Quick Edit.

A list of notable enhancements across the data catalog!

We're excited to introduce some powerful improvements and enhancements. Here's a list of our latest releases to the enterprise data catalog

1) Archie Bots - description generator enhancement

Archie Bots can now effortlessly describe all types of catalog resources, including custom resources. This improvement saves you time enriching your catalog, improving discoverability and understandability. You can read more about Archie Bots here.

2) Improvements to UX and increased max character count of descriptions

Enjoy getting wordy! We've increased the maximum character count of the Description field to 5000, allowing for more comprehensive and detailed information. We've also included markdown support in the hover-over view of descriptions and increased the view window size in search results.

3) Improvements to the search and navigation of Glossary terms

Users can now quickly filter by the first letter, making it easier to locate and manage terms. We've also made improvements to how special characters are sorted in the glossary, ensuring a more intuitive and organized experience.

4) Now you can query the catalog layers

Customers can now query the layers of the graph using a named graph called :current. This feature federates your source data and catalog enrichments into one queryable graph, simplifying data exploration across catalog layers and allowing for easier exploration and analysis of your data assets. You can read more about the catalog layers and how to query them here.

We hope these enhancements empower you to make the most of your enterprise data catalog. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the future!

Improvements to Metadata Collectors Page and Collector Wizard

To make collector setup faster and easier for catalog administrators, the Metadata Collectors page and Command Builder Wizard now support saving, editing, and deleting collector configurations for on-premise collectors.

Some of the new functionality in this release are:

Collectors configured from the UI will be saved and viewable, even before collectors are run. Previously, collector configurations were not saved for later use.
Collector configurations can be edited and deleted.
Users can give collector configurations custom names.
New table “Catalog metadata sources” shows all collectors that are bringing metadata into the catalog.

For more information, refer to the documentation here.

Launching Sigma and InfluxDB Collectors

🚀 Exciting News: Launching Two New Metadata Collectors on data.world! 🚀

Today, we are excited to announce the release of two new metadata collectors on data.world: the Sigma Collector and the InfluxDB Collector. These tools are designed to simplify and supercharge your data integration and management capabilities.

🔍 Why you'll love the Sigma Collector:

For Sigma users, governance can sometimes be a challenge. We’re here to help! Now, with data.world, you can obtain a clear visibility into your Sigma workbooks, files, datasets, and more, ensuring data protection, control, and traceability.
Business decision-makers can now effortlessly visualize and integrate Sigma's KPIs and metrics with data from other sources, leading to informed decisions.
Data analysts will have improved data trust levels. How? Metadata for Sigma workbooks and elements (e.g., titles, descriptions, authors, last updated info) are now easily accessible within data.world, giving quick and deep insight.
Gain valuable insight into data quality and health via a Sigma Hoot, our latest DataOps feature. Read more about Hoots in this Whatsnew Post from August.

🌟 Sigma Collector Features:

Metadata Harvested: Workspace, Workbook, Folder, Dataset, Connection, Tag, Grant, Member, Team, and Data Element.
Lineage: Capture inter-system lineage within Sigma, connecting to tables, datasets, and other data elements in the workbook.

An example of Sigma Workbook metadata inside the data.world platform, such as who created and last updated the workbook as well as permissions, as well as Lineage.

🔍 How the InfluxDB Collector helps you:

Enhance your visualization dashboards! With InfluxDB being a pivotal data source for Grafana, it’s essential to understand the intricate Influx-Grafana relationship. We make that possible.
Dive deep into metadata about buckets, tasks, and measurement columns, empowering users to easily locate and monitor time series data, coupled with insights on its processing.

🌟 InfluxDB Collector Features:

Metadata Harvested: Bucket, Measurement Schema, Measurement Column, Task, Label, Organization, and Telegraf Configuration.

An example of metadata from an InfluxDB Task inside the data.world platform, including the expression, last run status, and task status.

In a world where data is continuously evolving, it’s crucial to have the right tools for discoverability, integration, and governance. With our new collectors, we aim to make your journey smoother, more insightful, and more powerful.

Sigma, a Tier 1 collector, and InfluxDB, a Tier 2 collector, are both available immediately for Enterprise Customers. Read the documentation for full details:

Hoots and BB Bots available for enterprise customers

Note – in January 2024, BB Bots were renamed Sentry Bots

Release Notes – August 17, 2023

Announcing the launch of Hoots and BB Bots, the latest in our set of DataOps application features, free to all tiers of our enterprise catalog customers.

What problems do Hoots and BB Bots solve? Hoots bring the relevant information from the catalog to your data-consuming teams (analysts, scientists, executives, etc.) and provide simple communication and timely updates about data quality and freshness via BB Bots. Together, these features increase communication and trust and save your data engineering team valuable time in reanswering the same data questions across your data-consuming teams.

What is a Hoot? A Hoot surfaces important context about your data – including data quality and usage information – directly to the applications being used to make data-driven decisions. This saves data producers time that would otherwise be spent answering questions about the state of the data and ensure that data consumers have the context they need to use data confidently.

How do Hoots work? Hoots are simple trust badges that turn green, red, or yellow depending on the health status of your data pipeline. Hoots are configured from the catalog and added to your web-based data product to inform users of health status and more information that is fed automatically from the catalog and automated monitors called BB Bots.

What is a BB Bot? BB Bots are automated monitors that change the status color of the Hoots, providing a trust signal to end-users and allowing data engineers more time to investigate issues and less time answering and re-answering questions.

How do BB Bots work? BB Bots monitor the data.world Data Catalog Platform and other orchestration and observability tools, like Airflow, Monte Carlo, dbt and Matillion. BB Bots automate the communication of data quality and health status and surface this information to the Hoot where it can provide important context alongside other information from the catalog, like definitions, lineage, owner, and policies. All of this information is surfaced in the Hoot that lives on the applications that data consumers are using, like Looker, PowerBI, and Tableau.

To find out how to configure a Hoot, you can read more about these features in our product documentation and enroll in the DataOps and BB Bots course available at data.world University.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) support for metadata collection is now Live!

Announcing our newest metadata collector - SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)! This collector is designed to provide you with an effective solution for extracting metadata from your SSRS environment into your data.world catalog. Our integration facilitates the automated extraction, organization, and presentation of specific metadata elements from your SSRS system. You'll gain valuable insights into your datasets, data sources, folders, KPIs, reports, and linked reports – all within your easily navigable catalog.

With the SSRS collector, you can:

Learn more about your reports and data, including who created a report or dataset and when they were last updated, helping you understand and trust your data
See the lineage of which datasets were used in a report, allowing you a comprehensive view of the data flowing into a report
Keep track of KPIs from SSRS and integrate them with business metrics from other source systems, all within one easy-to-use catalog, leading to better data-informed decisions

Are you ready to unlock the potential of your SQL Server Reporting Services? You can read more about how this collector works and all it harvests in the documentation. This collector is Tier 2 for Enterprise customers, and is available in dwcc version 2.151 and later.

An example of metadata from an SSRS Report, including Lineage: