Collaborate with Workflows and Comments
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe what a workflow ticket is and when to use one.
- Describe how workflows, comments, and notifications work together to keep stakeholders informed and accountable.
- Explain how comments on asset pages help teams collaborate and share knowledge.
Keep the Team Moving with Workflows and Comments
Good data governance depends on clear communication, and Cloud Data Governance and Catalog (CDGC) keeps it all in one place. Your team can flag issues, request changes, and have conversations directly on the assets themselves, without emails or switching between tools.
Angela’s colleague Arif Setiawan, a sales associate at Infiwave, notices that a key dataset in the catalog—the Subscriber Account Details dataset—is missing critical field descriptions for customer contract type and plan tier. He also spots that the email field in the Customer Contact Records dataset has a low data-quality score.
Instead of sending a message that might get overlooked, Arif uses the workflows and comments built in to CDGC to communicate his findings directly—right where the data lives. Let’s learn how he does this.
Explore Workflows
In CDGC, a workflow is a defined sequence of steps that routes governance actions—like reviews, approvals, or updates—to the right people at the right time. When something needs attention in your data catalog, a workflow kicks off automatically, notifies the right stakeholders, and tracks progress until the work is done. Workflows are configured in the Metadata Command Center (MCC), where admins can set up triggers so teams don’t have to manually follow up on every request.
Track Requests with Workflow Tickets
When you search for assets in CDGC, some may be missing information or existing information may be inaccurate. A workflow ticket is a simple way to communicate with the people responsible for an asset. You can let them know something needs to be created, corrected, or investigated.
Think of a ticket as a formal request that follows a defined process to resolution. You can find tickets you have created or have been assigned in Ticket Manager, accessible from the header toolbar.
Three Types of Workflow Tickets
CDGC supports three types of tickets, each for a specific governance scenario.
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Approval Request for Create: This ticket starts a workflow when you want to create an asset that doesn’t exist yet—such as a missing business term or policy that doesn’t meet your requirements.
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Approval Request for Change: This ticket starts a workflow when information about an asset needs to be updated or corrected.
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Data Quality Failure: This ticket starts a workflow when you want to remediate a poor data quality score in a rule occurrence.
Comments in CDGC
CDGC supports two types of comments.
Workflow Comments
Workflow comments are tied directly to a ticket. When a ticket is raised on an asset, participants in the workflow—such as the requester and the assigned stakeholder—can exchange comments within the ticket to clarify the issue, provide context, or update the status. This keeps the conversation focused and connected to the specific action being tracked.
Asset Comments
Asset comments appear on the asset page and are visible to all users with access. They add context to an asset and support discussions, questions, and knowledge sharing beyond any single ticket or workflow.
Here’s how asset comments work in practice.
- When you type a comment, it posts publicly on the asset page for all users to see.
- To direct a comment to a specific user, use @username to tag them. CDGC provides a dropdown of taggable users when you type the @ symbol.
- Include links in comments for quick reference to related resources.
- Use the reply link to respond to an existing comment, which threads related discussions.
- To start a separate conversation on a new topic, select Start a New Thread. This creates a distinct thread on the asset page and keeps discussions organized.
How Workflows, Comments, and Notifications Work Together
Tickets, comments, and notifications work together to create a clear, connected collaboration loop. Here’s how.
When Arif raises a Data Quality Failure ticket on the Customer Contact Records dataset, the person responsible for that asset (the stakeholder) receives a notification. The stakeholder can then open the asset, review the issue, and fix it. This creates a clear, traceable path from identifying a problem all the way to resolving it—without relying on email or chat.
Workflows are set up in the Metadata Command Center—a central place to manage how metadata flows across your data sources. Workflows can be triggered automatically when a ticket is raised, which notifies the right people immediately with no manual follow-up required.
Notifications keep everyone informed—when a new ticket is created, a status changes, or someone leaves a comment. Angela can monitor all open tickets from the Tickets widget on her dashboard, so no ticket goes untracked.
Comments as a Knowledge-Sharing Tool
Asset comments create a living record of team knowledge. For example, when Arif posts a question on the Customer Contact Records dataset, colleagues can reply directly on the asset page, building a thread that anyone can read to quickly understand the context. Over time, these conversations add valuable insight, making it easier to know who owns a dataset and which version to trust—especially in large organizations.
Wrap It Up
With CDGC, Angela got full visibility into her team’s data quality, and Arif resolved the issues he flagged—all without leaving the platform. Now you have the skills to do the same.