Master Data Management

Product: IBM Master Data Management Express Version: 1.0.0.3

We’ve heard your feedback and have been hard at work developing a better MDM Express experience for you. This release will introduce a loaded set of new features to improve your time to value and help you get more out of your data faster.

Stewardship

This release includes several functional changes to support the ability to perform lightweight stewardship and the ability to manually override matching for any given record or entity. Prior to having stewardship, you were forced to accept our system’s view of which records should or shouldn’t be matched together. Now, you can exert control over this process by applying organizational context that only you possess, which can be fundamental in recognizing unique scenarios, such as the fact that two distinct customer entities should actually be one.

First, is the ability to quickly link/unlink data, restructured as actions: “join”, “move”, and “unlink” for enhanced flexibility.

What does this mean? Simply put, you can now dictate where specifically to “move” a record to or from; “join” two entities together, consolidating their child records in the process; and “unlink” records from entities they don’t belong to.

As such an integral function of master data management, quick link/unlink features are now directly accessible through the Master Data Catalog search results. Once you find what you’re looking for, simply select the intended record or entity and trigger your action. Just imagine being able to manage entities as efficiently as you curate your favorite music playlist and you’ve got it. When balanced with our enhanced, preview-able confirmation flow, you can feel 100% confident your decisions are having their intended results before moving forward.

Second, we’ve added the benefits of CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) , which were previously driven by API reads and writes. We’ve now streamlined the process, incorporating it directly into the UI, making updating customer addresses or changing telephone numbers a simple matter of clicking to edit.

History and Undo

 We understand that humans are not infallible, so we’ve also introduced new entity and record history views, which not only track changes for you to review, but also provide hassle-free “undo” capabilities as needed. The moment something feels incorrect, dig into the details to figure out why and take corrective action with a few quick clicks.

Graph Views

With a focus on improving overall guidance and utility, we’ve also introduced the same quick link/unlink features in our existing Relationship Graph; and as an added analytical bonus, introduced a new Entity Graph view as well. When you can see relationship scores at a glance, understanding how and why entities form will never be easier.

As a takeaway, IBM MDM Express has and will continue to evolve to better suit your needs. And not just MDM Express, look for these same features (and more) to make an appearance in our SE and AE products as well. Our goal is to take the complexity out of mastering your data at scale to help you reach actionable insights faster. When data works for you, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish!

To learn more:

Using the entity graph view to see how entities and records are linked

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSWSR9_11.6.0/com.ibm.swg.im.mdmhs.mdmexpress.doc/topics/mdmx_entitydetails.html


Joining, unlinking, and moving records and entities

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSWSR9_11.6.0/com.ibm.swg.im.mdmhs.mdmexpress.doc/topics/mdmx_stewardship.html



Blog Author:

Michael Yee
UX Designer, IBM MDM
Michael.Yee@ibm.com
#MasterDataManagement