Lenses

One view over several asset types, and who may see it.

Before you start

Anyone can open a lens that has been shared with them. Creating one needs Manage lenses (LENS_MANAGE). In the starter model it comes with Sysadmin.
Editing a lens changes it for everybody. There is no personal copy.

Build one

Open Manage lenses in the sidebar, under Administration, and press New lens.

Name it. One name per repository, because everybody opens them from one list.
Choose the asset types. Tick as many as you like, or tick every asset type — which also covers any type added to the metamodel later.
Choose the columns. Pick one from the drop-down and press Add column. You are offered everything the chosen types carry between them, not only what they have in common. A column only some of them have says so — on 2 of your 11 types — and shows an empty cell on the rest. The chosen columns are listed in the order the table will draw them, with arrows to move one and remove to take it off.
Add conditions if you want to narrow it, including date ranges: between two days, or in the last 30 days.
Add levels if you want a tree rather than a list.
Say who it is for. Everyone, or named people, teams and roles. Name co-editors if other people should be able to change it.

A condition on a column only some types have

This is the one thing worth reading twice.

Say a view covers Tables and Business Terms, and you put a condition on Contains PII, which only Tables carry. Each condition carries its own answer:

applies to every type (the default) — a row that cannot carry the attribute cannot satisfy the condition, so the Business Terms drop out. This is what Contains PII is Yes should mean.
only where the column exists — the condition narrows the Tables and leaves the Business Terms whole.

The screen says which of your types each condition touches, so a condition that empties half a view says so before you save it.

A harvested column — one of the at source ones a connector brings in, such as Data Type at Source — belongs to the types that actually carry it, exactly as a declared attribute does. So Data Type at Source, which only Columns have, says on 1 of your 2 types, and a condition on it told to apply only where the column exists leaves the other type whole.

As a tree

A lens can have levels, like any other view: each one follows a relation from the level above, and each level has its own columns.

Level 1 is the asset types you chose. Because that is more than one type, the relations on offer name both ends — Table contains Columns, Business Term owned by Data Domains — and say how many of your types each one reaches. A level applies where it applies: a row of a type that does not have that relation simply has nothing under it, and stays on the page.

Under the first level there is no mixture left: a relation has one target, so level 2 is one kind of thing and so is everything below it.

Who sees what

Seen by — everyone, or named people, teams and roles.
A team is whoever is in it today, not whoever was in it when you shared the view.
A role is whoever holds it anywhere — a steward of three hundred tables is a steward. The lens is not opened standing on an asset, so there is no here to hold a role in.
Naming somebody takes everyone off the list, and choosing everyone takes the named rows off. Both at once would read as a narrowing and mean nothing of the kind.
Also edited by — named people and teams. Its creator and anybody holding Manage lenses can always edit it.

A view narrowed to a team is not in anybody else's sidebar, and its link is refused by name to anybody else.

Rows still follow ordinary asset access: two people opening one lens may see different numbers of rows, and neither sees anything they should not.

Reading one

Open Lenses in the sidebar. Everything shared with you is listed by name, with a box to narrow the list when there are more of them than you want to read. Rows arrive a page at a time — 100 by default, changed with Rows under the table. Long text is cut to one line — hover a cell to read it whole, or press Show full text beside Export.

Taking it away

Export is on the lens itself, beside Edit this lens. Whoever can see a lens can export it: the rows are already on their screen, and a refused download would only mean retyping them.

Excel is the formatted report, with the view's name and the date at the top.
CSV is the same rows and nothing else. A lens with levels comes out as Excel only — an outline in a CSV is a list of names with the one fact that made it a tree taken out.

The file is the whole view and not the page you were looking at, up to 2,000 rows. If it stops there it says so on the line under the title, and the CSV says it in its own file name.

Deleting one

Delete is on each row of Manage lenses, and again at the foot of the builder. Whoever may edit a lens may delete it — its creator, anybody named under Also edited by, and anybody holding Manage lenses. It goes for everybody it was shared with. The assets it listed are untouched: a lens is a way of reading them and nothing else.