End to End Governance Workflow Tutorial

Written by Swati Nanda  @SWATI NANDA  and Kavita Biswas @Kavita Biswas

Reviewed by Thomas Schwarz schwarzt@de.ibm.com 

The IBM Knowledge Catalog service, a part of IBM Cloud Pak for Data, provides a Governance Workflow that is a series of tasks performed in a specific order to publish Governance Artifacts such as Business Terms, Classifications, Data Classes, Reference Data Sets, Policies, and Governance Rules. This workflow assists key stakeholders, including Data Governance Officers/Chief Information Officers and others responsible for enterprise governance, in organizing tasks for Approval, Review, and Publishing efficiently by the relevant workflow Assignees.

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the step-by-step process of configuring and understanding the Governance Workflow, specifically focusing on the One Approval and one review step configurations. 

List of services required on top of Cloud Pak For Data:

IBM Knowledge Catalog Service

Persona Setup:

Create dedicated user groups and add each user group as a member to the category role that represents the group’s intent. Using user groups to define the members of category roles and category roles to define the Assignees of a step in a workflow configuration allows for centralized management of responsibilities and minimizes configuration efforts.

Workflow Administrator: Responsible for creating workflow configurations.

Data Stewards: Responsible for adding Governance Assets.

Approvers: Responsible for approving workflow tasks.

Publishers: Responsible for completing the publish workflow task and publishing Governance assets.

Step1: Creating Roles and assigning roles to the user/user group

Login as Admin, from the top right corner, change the perspective to IBM Software Hub and navigate to Access Control.

Create a custom role called Workflow Admin and add the necessary permissions Manage Glossary, Manage Governance categories and Manage workflows.

Create a group called Workflow Admin Group and assign the Workflow Admin role to the group.

Create a group called Data Steward Group and assign the necessary roles to the group.

Create groups called Editor, Approver, and Publisher, and assign the Data Steward role to each group.

Step2: Log in as a Data Steward and create a category for which the governance workflow will be triggered.

Navigate to Governance, select Categories, and click on the “New Category” button. Enter the name of the category and a description, then click on “Create.”.

Step3: Assign role to the groups in the category.

In the category, select “Access Control” and click on “Add collaborators.” Add the user groups and it’s Category role.

DSTW Editors Group as Editor
DSTW Approvers Group as Owner
DSTW Publishers Group and Workflow Admin Group as Admin

Step4: Login as Workflow Administrator and configure Governance Workflow One step approval and one step review.

a. Navigate to Workflows and select Governance Artifact management tile

b. Click on Workflow Configuration tab and then click on New Configuration. Note by default Default workflow configuration will be enabled. Enter Name “One Approval Workflow Configuration for Finance” and select One step Approval and One step review option and click on Create button.

c. Start configuring the workflow by adding details.

In Workflow Conditions section click on Add Condition and select Category option as we are going to create workflow configuration for specific Category “Finance”. If this workflow configuration needs to be followed by all the categories then select All Categories.

Select Asset type (Business Terms, Policy, Governance Rule, Classification, Data Class and Reference Data Set) and select actions(Create/Update/Delete/Import/Move) for which workflow should be triggered.

Click on select button and observe that table is filled up.

In Approve section add duration, Assignees and Notifications.

Add 1 day in duration, select Category role as Owner in Assignee and all the actions in notification.

In Publish Section add duration, Assignees and Notifications.

Add 1 day in duration, select Category role as Admin in Assignee and all the actions in notification.

Activate the Workflow Configuration by clicking Activate button.

Step5: Login as Editor and Create or import Glossary Asset

Navigate to Governance Business Term. From the right corner, drop down and select “Add Business Term.” Enter the Name, Primary Category, and Description.

Click on “Save as draft” and the draft is created.

Step6: Sending Task for Approval

Click on the “Send for approval” button by adding a comment.

A notification will be received by the requester, and the status will change to “Ready for Approval”.

Note: To receive email notifications, enable “Send all notifications to my email”.

Step7: Login as Approver from the bell icon, check the notification.

Navigate to the Task Inbox and claim the task. Once the task is claimed by one Approver, the task will not be visible to other Assignees until it is returned.

Step8: Approving Task.

Click on Approve button after checking all the details. Add comment and click on Approve button from popup.

Check the Completed tab once approved. Ready for Publishing status will be displayed.

Step9: Log in as Publisher from the bell icon and check the notification.

Review the task and activities log by navigating to Task Inbox and clicking on “See all Activities” from the right-hand side panel.

Step10: Publishing Task

Click on the “Publish” button after checking all the details. Add a comment and click on the “Publish” button from the popup.

Navigate to the “Business Terms” tab and check the “Published” tab.

The same steps will be followed when a Governance asset is updated or deleted.

Workflow Administration:

To monitor and change Assignees from Task Status as a Workflow Administrator, log in to the system and navigate to the Workflows section. From there, click on the Task Status tab to access the relevant functionality.

Conclusion: Using a single approval process for governance helps simplify decision-making and keeps things clear and organized. It reduces complexity, speeds up approvals, and ensures that important tasks are carefully reviewed. This approach makes it easier to maintain control, improve transparency, and stay compliant, offering a straightforward solution for organizations that want to streamline their processes without overloading people with too many approval steps.

We eagerly anticipate your engagement in trying our scenario and share your experience in comment section.