Overview of data.world
This overview of data.world is good both for people who are new to the platform and also for those who want an in-depth explanation of all the components of each screen. It is organized from the highest level view down to the granularity of the tabs for each screen.
The main header on most data.world pages consists of five elements:
The data.world logo - When you select it, it takes you back to your home page
A search bar - For resources in data.world
A +New button - A quick link to creating datasets and projects
A notifications icon - Whenever anyone takes action on a resource you own, you will be alerted here
Your avatar - It links to your profile, your settings, and is also where you go to log out of the platform
The left sidebar of every data.world screen is a global navigation menu. This sidebar is a your navigation portal to all the resources to which you have permissions on data.world. The icons displayed there will vary depending on whether you are in an organization or not, and if your company uses our metadata catalog:
If you are in one or more organizations, the first icon on the left sidebar is the Organizations icon. It links to a page with tiles for all the organizations you are in:
Selecting an organization takes you to that organization's home page, which in turn contains links to all of the organization's resources including (depending on the components the organization uses) datasets, projects, business terms, reports, tables, members, data connections, the organization settings, and curated collections of the organization's resources:
The next icon on the sidebar is for your Data. Unlike the Data tile on an organization home page, the Data icon on the sidebar takes you to a page where you can access all of the datasets that you own, as well as all the datasets to which you have access in any of your organizations:
At the top of this page is a linked list to all the datasets you've accessed recently. Below that are tiles organizing the datasets by who owns them. The tiles link to lists of the datasets grouped by owner.
The Analysis icon on the sidebar is your link to all the projects and dashboards either owned by you or by your organization in which you're a member:
This page serves as a jumping off point to your recently viewed projects and dashboards. And like the Data page, it has a linked list to all the analysis resources you've accessed recently. The tiles show all the analysis resources either you own or which are owned by any of your organizations.
If your company uses one or more business glossaries, the Glossary link on the sidebar takes you to a page that shows all the glossaries to which you have access. Like the other pages accessed from the left sidebar, the page has your recently viewed items at the top, and links to your organizations' glossary lists below:
The next icon down on the sidebar links to your Bookmarks. Bookmarks are quicklinks to resources you access often:
From the Bookmarks page you can:
Open the resource by clicking on it
See who created it
See when it was last updated
See what tags are used in it
On the three-dot menu to the right of the name are options to:
Unbookmark it
Open it, if it's a project
Add it to an existing project, if it's a dataset
Open a new project workspace for it, if it's a dataset
The last of the menu items on the upper left of the sidebar is for Notifications:
The Notifications page contains Alerts, which are items like requests for you to join or contribute to a project and Notifications. Alerts require an action on your part--accept or decline--before the action takes effect. Notifications are informational in nature only--they don't require action from you.
The datasets tile on your organization's home page is your portal to all the datasets owned by your organization and the metadata about them. If your organization uses our metadata catalog, all the metadata captured for your organization's data sources can be found here. This is also where all of the datasets containing your data--both stored on data.world and from virtual connections--are located:
Under the Data tile is the count of the datasets owned by the organization. Clicking on the Data tile or the link to the number of datasets right below it will open a list of all your organization's datasets. There you can see:
The names of the datasets
Who created them
When they were last updated
The tags used in them
Notice in the upper right corner that there is a search bar which contains a filter to only return the datasets owned by the organization. To the right of the search bar is a button to create a new dataset or project. The three-dot menu on the very right has an option to edit multiple datasets at once (assuming you have edit permissions to them).
When you click on one of the datasets and open it, you'll see a header at the top of the page that has several valuable pieces of information and actions that you can take in regards to the dataset:
On the left of the header are:
The icon indicating that the resource is a dataset
The name of the dataset
Its status (this is an available configuration)
The name of the owning organization and a link to its profile page
On the right of the header are options to:
Share the dataset
Bookmark it (and see how many others have bookmarked it
Access the Explore this dataset menu
On the Explore menu are options to:
See all the projects that use the dataset
Connect the dataset to an existing project
Open the dataset with a third-party application (integrated with data.world)
Create a new project using the dataset
When you open a dataset, you land on the Overview tab:
In the pane directly below the header is the short description of the dataset, and the longer summary information.
Much of the information on a dataset's overview tab is configurable by your organization. Shown below is a More Information section containing an example of completely configured metadata :
Directly below the information pane is a section containing:
A count of the number of files in the dataset
The autosync settings for the dataset
Sorting options for the dataset files below
The option to view them in a preview or in a list
A link to add new files (depending on your permissions to the dataset)
All of the files in the dataset are listed next. Tabular files are also previewed. Beneath all of the files at the bottom of the page are references for related datasets that might interest you. Notice the rich metadata that can be included in the preview:
There is a right sidebar on the Overview, Access, and Activity tabs of a dataset page that holds more default and custom metadata about the dataset:
In our example this metadata includes:
The sharing settings
Who created it and when
The various people who manage it (Steward and Tech Owner)
Who verified it and when
The tags used on it
It's size
The data dictionary information about it with a link to the dictionary
A list of the queries that live in the dataset
Below the queries is a list of related projects, and the recent updates to the dataset including what they were, who made them, and when:
The Access tab on a dataset lists everyone who has access to the dataset as well as what their access permissions are. The names are links that will take to their user profiles:
If you are an administrator of the dataset you can also invite new contributors from by selecting Grant Access. and completing the Invite contributors dialog:
The Discussion tab of a dataset is a place to capture all the communication between team members about the dataset:
The content on the page is grouped into topics to keep it orderly. The information on the Topic tag includes:
A description of the topic
How many comments are in the topic
The category of the topic
When you have something to post you can either put it in an existing topic or create a new topic:
You can also flag or like comments. Flagging a post notifies a moderator of potentially inappropriate content in the post:
Comments in topics use Markdown and can contain images and links.
The Activity tab of a dataset is packed with information about everything that has happened to the dataset, and it also provides access to previous versions of the dataset. The Activitytab has two different screens, the first of which shows you all the activity that's taken place:
The second screen on the Activity tab holds the version information for the dataset and allows you to download previous versions as necessary:
The Settings tab of a dataset is for administrators to manage the dataset. It has two screens, the first of which is for administrative settings which include:
The dataset visibility
Automatic syncing options
Additional notification recipients
Archive options
A delete button
The second screen on the Settings tab is for configuring and managing webhooks to the dataset:
The projects tile on your organization's home page is your portal to all the projects owned by your organization. From here you can access your organization's data analysis projects and the metadata around them.
Under the projects tile are counts of the projects owned by this organization. Clicking on the projects tile or the link to the number of projects right below it will open a list of all your organization's projects. There you can see:
The names of the projects
Who created them
When they were last updated
The tags used in them
Notice in the upper right corner that there is a search bar which contains a filter to only return the projects owned by the organization. To the right of the search bar is a button to create a new dataset or project. The three-dot menu on the very right has an option to edit multiple projects at once (assuming you have edit permissions to them).
When you click on one of the projects and open it, you'll see a header at the top of the page that has several valuable pieces of information and actions that you can take in regards to the project:
On the left of the header are:
The icon indicating that the resource is a project
The name of the project
Its status (this is an available configuration)
The name of the owning organization and a link to its profile page
On the right of the header are options to:
Share the project
Bookmark it (and see how many others have bookmarked it
Access the Launch workspace menu
From the Workspace menu you can also open the project in a third-party application (integrated with data.world).
There is a right sidebar on the Overview tab of a project page that holds more default and custom metadata about the project:
In our example this metadata includes:
The sharing settings
Who created it and when
The various people who manage it (Steward and Tech Owner)
Who verified it and when
The tags used on it
A list of the queries that live in the project
Below the queries is a list of the data sources used in the project, and the recent updates to the project including what they were, who made them, and when:
When you open a project from the projects list you land on the Overview tab:
In the pane directly below the header is the short description of the project, and the longer summary information.
Much of the information on a project's overview tab is configurable by your organization. Shown below is a More Information section containing an example of completely configured metadata :
Directly below the information pane are buttons to:
Add data
Write a query
Create a new insight
If there are any insights associated with the project they are listed next:
From here you can also bookmark the insight or comment on it.
The Activity tab of a project is packed with information about everything that has happened to the project, and it also provides access to previous versions of the project. The Activity tab has two different screens, the first of which shows you all the activity that's taken place:
On this screen you can see who made changes, when, and what kind of changes were made. For some changes there is a details screen view accessed from the Show changes link:
The second screen on the Activity tab holds the version information for the project and allows you to download previous versions as available:
The Insights tab on a project contains all the insights created from the project. The insights are previewed in the main pane on the left and there is a thumbnail gallery of them on the right:
You can comment on insights, and also bookmark them:
The Discussion tab of a project is a place to capture all the communication between team members about the project:
The content on the page is grouped into topics to keep it orderly. The information on the Topic tag includes:
A description of the topic
How many comments are in the topic
The category of the topic
When you have something to post you can either put it in an existing topic or create a new topic by selecting the +: to the right of Topics in the upper left of the screen. You will be presented with a dialog window in which to create your topic:
You can also flag or like comments. Flagging a post notifies a moderator of potentially inappropriate content in the post:
Comments in topics use Markdown and can contain images and links:
The Access tab on a project lists everyone who has access to the project as well as what their access permissions are. The names are links that will take to their user profiles:
If you are an administrator of the project you can also invite new people to view or contribute to the project from this page. using the Grant access link at the top right.
The Settings tab of a project is for administrators to manage the project. It has two screens, the first of which is for administrative settings:
These settings include:
The project
visibility
Automatic syncing options
Additional notification recipients
Archive options
A delete button
The second screen on the Settings tab is for configuring and managing webhooks to the project:
The business glossary component of the metadata catalog on data.world brings your business terms into the heart of working with your data. And as different business units can have their own glossary terms, each organization you have also has the potential to have it's own Business Glossary.
The terms in the glossary are not only listed in the glossary for easy access by everyone in your organization, but they are also linked into the data itself and the projects using the data in a dynamic and fluid way. With the seamless integration you not only can access your glossary terms where you need them, but you can also easily keep them current and associate them with new data and projects as required.
There are two different ways to get your existing business terms into a glossary in your data.world catalog. If you already have an existing list of terms defined, we can upload them for you. If you don't have defined glossary terms yet, we can help you define them and then upload them for you. Once your business glossary has been created, you can manage it--editing, adding, and deleting terms--yourself from within data.world.
Your Business Glossary (or glossaries if you are in more than one organization) can be accessed either from the sidebar under Glossary:
Or from your organization's home page from the business terms tile:
When you open the glossary, you'll see that it has not only a list of terms, but also a variety of other metadata information custom-configured for your catalog:
In this example, in the upper left of the screen are the collections that reference various terms (and how many they reference). Below collections are the types of terms, and the tags used for them. Each organization's glossary contains different, configurable metadata elements, the ones shown are just for example.
Although you can delete glossary terms it is often a better idea to differentiate between current, or approved terms and deprecated ones. The green icon to the right of the terms shown above is an example of a glossary that flags terms as approved. When a term is no longer used it can be marked as deprecated to show that it is no longer in use anymore.
When you select a business term from the list you are taken to the Overview tab on the listing for the term. The metadata collected for a business glossary term is as extensive as that of any other resource on data.world, and its overview page looks very much like the overview page for a dataset or project:
As with the main organization Business Glossary list page, the metadata collected and displayed on the overview page is completely configurable with our metadata cataloger. In this example, on the top left are the icon for Business Glossary term, the name of the term, its status, and the identification of the type of resource it. The top portion of the main area contains the Description, the Summary, and the More Information sections. Scrolling down you'll find the relationship information for the term including what dashboards, tables, and columns reference it:
The bottom section of the main window contains the Technical Details about the terms--the Knowledge Graph of its relationships which provide a visual representation of the relationships:
Finally, on the top right is the About information containing (in our example):
The collection(s) the term is in
When it was created and last updated
The people in the organization who are responsible for it and links to their user profiles
Verification information
Tags
The discussion tab of a glossary term is where the information about the term, its status, usage, etc., can be presented and questioned. It provides a place to document and discuss the resource while keeping the discussion separate from the resource's other, permanent components. Discussion topics are grouped on the left and you can either replay to an existing one or create a new one:
The final tab on a business glossary term page is the Settings tab. The Settings tab holds the permissions to the business term. From here it can be transferred to another organization or deleted:
The Members tile on an organization's home page--also a tab on an organization profile--contains a linked list to all the people associated with an organization. It is configurable and has two different views. Members of the organization will see a thumbnail grid:
Administrators and contributors in the organization see an ordered, linked list:
The list can be sorted by the columns by either clicking on the column name or by selecting the icon to the right of it. Sorting options are:
Name - ascending or descending
Username - ascending or descending
Role - a dropdown menu
Visibility - a dropdown menu
There is also a place to filter by display name or username, and a button to invite people to join the organization.
If you are an admin for your organization or are otherwise authorized to manage its data resources, you will have a Connection manager tile on your organization's home page.
From the main Connection manager screen you not only see a list of your current organizational-level connections, but you can
Create new connections
Edit or delete existing connections
Manage tasks
Note
If you need to create a personally-owned virtual data connection you will need to do that through our Integrations interface. Connection manager is only for connections that are owned by the organization.
If you are an administrator of an organization you will have access to the Settings tile on the organization's home page and the Settings tab on the organization's profile. There are four screens on the Settings page. The first is the Profile:
The profile is where an administrator can set or edit the organization's:
Display name
Parent organization
Website address
About information
Profile picture
The Preferences screen is for setting access permissions to the organization and setting up people outside the organization as recipients for organization notifications.
Webhooks can be created and configured on the third screen:
For more information about creating and using webhooks, see the article on organization webhooks in our API documentation.
The Billing screen shows the organization's current plan and also has a link to update the plan:
Whenever you select an organization to view you will be taken to the organization's home page. It is divided into two sections--one for resources, and one for collections, though not all organizations have collections.
The resource tiles you see on the home page are determined by your permissions, and by the data.world components used by your organization. The resources you see can include:
datasets - The data and metadata for your organization
projects - The projects and analysis dashboards for your data
business terms - Business glossary terms used by your organization
reports - Reports generated from analysis of your data in a project
tables - All the tables in your datasets
Members - A link to the Members tab on your organization's profile page
Connection manager ( visible if you are an administrator for your organization) - a list of the virtual connections to the data sources used by your organization
Settings (if you are an administrator for your organization) - A link to the Settings tab on your organization's profile page
On the bottom of the screen are the organization's collections. Collections are groupings of resources. The purpose of collections is to facilitate access to the large amounts of data that enterprises can have. The collections shown below are just examples of the kind of categorization you can do:
As each individual has a profile, each organization has one too ,and it is accessed by selecting the organization name the top of any dataset or project owned by the organization:
It is also linked from the Settings tile on the organization home page.
Note
Only admins for an organization can see and access the organization's settings.
An organization's profile page has three sections:
The header
The tabbed viewing screen
The About information
The header contains:
The avatar for the organization, which also serves as a link to the organization homepage wherever it shows up
Both the descriptive name and the username of the organization
A link to the organization's website
A button to Follow the organization if the home page is visible to non-members
All of this information is configurable for your organization, as is the About information on the right.
At the top of the Overview tab on an organization's profile is a Details section that can be written using data.world's powerful Simple Editor, or with Markdown. This field is completely configurable according to the organization's needs:
Below the Details section are the organization's data Resources . In the Resources section are:
A list of all of the data resources--datasets and projects--owned by the organization
A search bar to locate data resources more easily
A button to create a new dataset or project
A Sort menu with a large number of options
Each resource in the list contains a rich set of linked metadata.
As you would expect, the Activity tab on the organization profile shows a list of all the activity across the entire organization from commenting on insights, to creating datasets, to uploading files and more:
Note that all of the blue text in the list links back to the topic, to the resource, or to the person who made the change.
The Members tile on an organization's home page--also a tab on an organization profile--contains a linked list to all the people associated with an organization. It is configurable and has two different views. Members of the organization will see a thumbnail grid:
Administrators and contributors in the organization see an ordered, linked list:
The list can be sorted by the columns by either clicking on the column name or by selecting the icon to the right of it. Sorting options are:
Name - ascending or descending
Username - ascending or descending
Role - a dropdown menu
Visibility - a dropdown menu
There is also a place to filter by display name or username, and a button to invite people to join the organization.
The Followers tab on the organization profile contains a linkable list of all of the people who follow the organization:
The information displayed for them includes:
Their avatars
Their usernames
Their bio information
A link to follow them
If you are an administrator of an organization you will have access to the Settings tile on the organization's home page and the Settings tab on the organization's profile. There are four screens on the Settings page. The first is the Profile:
The profile is where an administrator can set or edit the organization's:
Display name
Parent organization
Website address
About information
Profile picture
The Preferences screen is for setting access permissions to the organization and setting up people outside the organization as recipients for organization notifications.
Webhooks can be created and configured on the third screen:
For more information about creating and using webhooks, see the article on organization webhooks in our API documentation.
The Billing screen shows the organization's current plan and also has a link to update the plan:
Collections are sub-groupings of an organization's metadata resources . They are very useful for accessing and managing resources on a departmental or other smaller group basis. Your organization's collections are tiled on the bottom of the organization home page in alphabetical order:
On the organization homepage you can viewi the tiles for all of your collections, filter the collections shown shown using the filter bar or create a new collection with the + New Collection: button to its right:
Overview
When you select a collection to view from an organization's homepage you will see resources that are assigned to that collection on the Overview tab of the Collections page. The overview tab has a description for the collection at the top, information about the collection in the fields to the right, and lists of tables, business terms, and reports that are in the collection in groupings below the description:
The second tab on a collection's page is the Settings tab. This tab is where you can see who has access to the collection, and, if you are an admin for the organization, you can also delete the collection:
