Publishing Content to the Catalog

When you publish assets, terms, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to the catalog, you determine what content is available for catalog users to discover. You can set source systems to automatically publish assets, or you can be more involved and manually publish individual assets from the asset details page or manually publish small groups of assets from the catalog search page.

Prerequisites

To publish content to the catalog, you must have a global role that grants you the following privileges:

Data Warehouse General (-R------) - To access SAP Datasphere.
Catalog Asset (–R-––-M) - To publish or unpublish assets or exclude assets from automatic publishing.
Catalog Glossary Object (CRUD–-M) - To add, edit, and delete categories and terms for glossaries. Also, to publish or unpublish terms.
Catalog KPI Object (CRUD–-M) - To add, edit, and delete categories and KPIs. Also, to publish and unpublish KPIs.

The Catalog Administrator global role and the DW Viewer role template (used directly as a global role) applied together, for example, grant these privileges. For more information, see Privileges and Permissions and Standard Roles Delivered with SAP Datasphere.

Enabling Automatic Publishing for Assets

Context

Organizations that don't need separate enrichment and publishing steps for assets can choose to automatically publish them from the source system to the catalog.

Procedure

In the side navigation area, choose  (Catalog & Marketplace)  (Metadata Extractions).
Set the automatic publishing option for a new or existing source system.
- New source system: In the Remote Systems table, choose Create.
- Existing source system: In the Systems list, select the source system you want and choose Edit.
In the dialog for creating or editing a source system, select the Enable Auto Publishing to the Catalog checkbox.
Choose Create to create the connection or choose Save to save the changes to the existing connection.
Review the warning message, and if you still want to enable automatic publishing, you can finish creating the connection or saving the changes.
For newly created source system connections, run a manual synchronization. For existing source systems, running a manual synchronization is optional.

Results

For newly created source system connections, after the manual synchronization finishes, all objects are published as assets to the catalog. Also, as part of the ongoing catalog monitoring of the source system, all new objects that are added to the source system are automatically extracted and published. The publication status of all assets automatically published to the catalog is set to Published.

For existing source system connections, the assets are updated immediately after the changes are saved.

Objects that are newly created in the source system are published as assets with their publication status set to Published.
Existing assets that have the Unpublished and Current statuses are published, and their publication statuses are updated to Published.
Existing assets that have the Published status remain published, and the publication status is unchanged.
Existing assets that have the Exclude status remain hidden to catalog users and the publication status is unchanged.

If there are assets that you don't want published, search for those assets and set their publication status to Excluded.

On the catalog search page, select the checkboxes for several assets and then choose Publish Actions  Exclude.
On the asset details page, choose the Publish Actions, and choose  Exclude.

These assets remain in the catalog, but are hidden to users with the Catalog User role. You can see which assets have the  (Excluded) publication status by viewing the icons on its catalog preview or impact and lineage analysis diagram or by reviewing the asset details page. To find all excluded assets, use the filters and select the Excluded publication status.

Publishing from the Catalog Search Page

Procedure

In the side navigation area, choose  (Catalog & Marketplace)  (Search).
On the catalog search page, select one or more assets, terms, or KPIs by selecting their checkboxes in Grid, List, or Table view.

In Grid view, different visibility icons tell you what is published, and therefore visible to anyone who uses the catalog, compared to unpublished objects:

In List and Table views, check the Publication Status field.
On the top toolbar, choose Publish Actions Publish.

Results

The status of the object changes to Published, and it can be discovered by all users in the catalog. The date and time when an object is published appears in the header under the Catalog Activity section. If you need to temporarily hide assets, terms, or KPIs from catalog users, select one or more objects and choose Start of the navigation path Publish Actions Next navigation step Unpublish End of the navigation path to unpublish the objects so they are no longer discoverable.

Publishing from the Object Details Page

Context

When you finishing enriching an asset or you finish creating and editing a term or KPI, you can publish the object directly from its details page.

Procedure

In the side navigation area, choose  (Catalog & Marketplace)  (Search).
Open the page for an unpublished asset, term, or KPI.
In the top-right corner, choose the Publish button.

Results

The status of the object changes to Published, and it can be discovered by all users in the catalog. The date and time when an object is published appears in the header under the Catalog Activity section. If you need to temporarily hide the asset, term, or KPI from catalog users, choose the Unpublish button to unpublish the object so it's no longer discoverable.

Next Steps

From time to time, the status of an object changes. For example, the functional status of an asset might show that it's no longer current. To ensure that all assets, terms, and KPIs are in good shape for your users, review statuses of the objects and decide what you need to do to fix the ones that have issues.