Forum Discussion
Data Product Owner and Contacts should be separate fields
Currently, the 'contacts' field under a data product has a 1 on 1 relationship with the 'data product owner' field. It is not possible to add 'contacts' seperately.
I believe this does not make sense for most organizations. For example, our data products have one owner, and multiple contacts (e.g. data stewards, data experts). That's how our governance works. We are not going to add people to the 'data product owner' field that are no data owners, just to show them in contacts.
Also, why would you have two fields that basically do the same? Clicking on 'data product owner' already gives me the information for 'contacts'.
Please let us add contacts here, that are not the data product owner.
11 Replies
SitaDMicrosoft
Hi Rik - You can add additional contacts and is not limited to the creator only.
You can edit the contact description now
We also introduced Expert to Terms
Will be adding for data products as well, however no firm ETA yet
Hi SitaD ,
As far as we can see, we cannot add additional contacts. We can add additional data product owners, which are then presented under contacts, where we provide a description. These fields have a 1-1 relationship, which we do not agree with.
Our existing Governance mandates that every data product should have only one owner. This makes it hard to just start adding multiple owners, for the sake of representing them as experts/contacts/stewards.
The owner/expert separation in terms, and also in assets, is exactly how it should be. Consistency across the application is key.
The UI components and data structures are already available. I'd say easy win.
Best,
Rik
We have been asking this for close to a year now darrenl NickDoughty
This is the most heard request from users that we onboard. They can't filter on custom fields. It's just one extra field that's readily available in other parts of the UI. Please fix it already.I second this. It's even more confusing if you have separate contacts on data asset level as well, like is the case now. Although I understand the difference between physical data assets and business concepts, it's hard to explain to my customers.
- NickDoughty
The intent of the single owner is to provide a simpler accountability method for everything in Purview. Ensuring that the owner is on every concept and the different levels and types of ownership will help to segment their expertise. We are adding custom attributes in the coming months (MS-Purview-Data-Governance-Roadmap-detailed.pdf) which will enable adding additional custom roles and names for those that should be contacted for specific questions. As we look to enhance the collaboration features within Purview we can look to provide specific roles based on how they would interact with others and the concepts they are a part of in the catalog.
Custom attributes do not provide a "Contact" field type, which means that the check for a valid name (entra id) is not available. The idea of custom adding contacts by this method without the same check as the "owner" leaves much to be desired.
If it remains this way, while adding custom fields, it will become confusing for users. We will then have:
- Data product owner
- Contact (which is the data product owner)
- A custom contact attribute (which is the actual contact)
While I appreciate the reply, I stand my ground. Data Product Owner and Contact should not have this one on one relationship.
I completely agree. Great point!
To further add to this: Data Assets already have a separate "owner" and "expert" field. That's how it should be.
A feature request with ID: 2890 has been raised.
darrenl I'm going to be a bit bold since you liked this comment. Can you push for this feature request as engineering lead? Data Assets & Business Glossary terms now have an Owner & Expert, while Data Products do not.
We foresee a lot of trouble with handling access request workflows in the future if we cannot address owners & experts separately.
