New Permission Management Model

Keep your data teams organized and efficient by ensuring every user can modify the right assets! 

For organizations with various types of users accessing Zeenea, it doesn’t make sense to give everyone full access to modify anything and everything in the catalog. It’s for this reason that we’ve refined our permission model and catalog management to allow you to increase efficiency for your organization and reduce the risk of errors.

Users and Contacts Management

In Zeenea Data Catalog, we distinguish between users and contacts:

• Users: A User can connect to and explore Zeenea Catalog.
• Contacts: A Contact is a person or company who is referenced in Zeenea and can be linked to an Item of the catalog.

A person can both be a user and a contact. Let’s explain. 

Users

A user is a physical person with read or write access to the Catalog. 

Each user is associated with a set of permissions that determines the set of editing and administrative rights that this person will have on the catalog, depending on their role in the company.

You can create and search for users directly in the Users and Contacts section of the Administration part of Zeenea.

Contacts

As mentioned above, a contact is a person or organization that can be linked to an Item in the catalog. This includes datasets, business terms, data processes, visualizations, and your custom Items. 

What distinguishes a contact from a user is that a contact doesn’t necessarily have access to Zeenea, but has expertise, responsibilities, and serves as a point of contact for specific questions on the said Item. Contacts are also part of the Item’s documentation.  

You can also create and search for contacts directly in the Users & Contacts section of the Administration part of Zeenea.

By default, Zeenea offers three types of user profiles to help better grasp the catalog: Super Admin, Data Steward, and Explorer. 

• A Super Admin has complete control over all of the assets of the catalog as well as the users administration, connections, and of the metamodel,
• A Data Steward can document and enrich assets in the catalog, 
• An Explorer can search for, discover, and view the information assets they need. 

In addition to users and contacts management in the catalog, you can now manage and customize specific permissions for specific users based on their profile and responsibilities in the company.

In the Admin, the new “Permission Model” section will allow you to manage the permission models and create your own types of users.

Permission Sets

When creating a new permission set, you fill out the following information in the general tab:

• Name of the Permission set
• Description (optional)

This information will allow you to search for and understand the types of users you have set up in your catalog.

You can also define for each permission set: 

• the types of objects that users assigned to this set will be allowed to read or manage in the catalog section, 
• the right to modify the catalog metamodel, 
• the catalog administration rights as well as the user & authorization administration section. 

Oh and also, there are no limits to your permission sets! Create as many as you need 🙂

Curatorship

When setting up your permission sets, you have the possibility, for documentation management permissions only, to define whether users have the right to act on all the objects in the catalog, or only on the Items in the catalog within their scope.

Their scope of action will be defined directly in the catalog by indicating on the Items who are the documentation managers called Curators.

The Curator will have a more precise and adapted Dashboard to their scope of action, which will allow them to easily manage the objects they are in charge of. 

This person will also be more easily identified by the Explorers as the referent person for any information or question related to the documentation of the Item. (Unlike a Contact, who is the referent for any information related to the Item itself). 

Conclusion

The implementation of this new permission sets model and of these Curators allows you to have :

• A more secure data catalog, only the right people can act on an Item’s documentation, 
• An easier documentation management, the scope of action of your users being clearer,
• Saves time for your Explorers, as the people to contact are better identified,
• A clearer organization of your data users, each one being well categorized thanks to its permission set.