One of many greatest challenges in security-conscious enterprises is getting well timed entry to the precise knowledge. Knowledge house owners typically juggle a flood of requests, whereas knowledge shoppers wait days—and even weeks—for approvals, slowing down evaluation and decision-making. With Unity Catalog’s new Request for Entry function, you may remove bottlenecks by enabling self-service entry requests straight from inside Databricks, so the precise individuals get the precise knowledge, quicker, with out sacrificing governance.
On this weblog, we’ll discover how admin groups can get began by organising entry request locations, clarify how customers could make entry requests, and supply steerage on having a distributed mannequin for entry approvals with central admin oversight.
How Request for Entry in Unity Catalog works
Request for Entry streamlines knowledge entry provisioning for a number of personas:
- Knowledge Customers: No extra guessing who to ask or the place to ship a ticket.
- Knowledge Homeowners / Stewards: A streamlined approval course of that reduces back-and-forth and retains governance intact.
- Knowledge Admins: A self-service system that scales, so that you spend much less time firefighting entry requests.
Route entry requests to the precise place
Earlier than customers can request entry, admins should configure entry request locations. These will be set on the catalog or schema stage, and the configuration is inherited by all objects inside them (tables, views, fashions, and so forth.).
You possibly can select from three vacation spot varieties:
- Electronic mail Locations: Ship entry request particulars to a number of electronic mail addresses.
- Exterior Locations: Route requests to Slack, Microsoft Groups, or any system that accepts incoming webhooks (e.g., Jira, ServiceNow).
- Redirect URL Vacation spot: Redirect customers to your group’s exterior entry request system as an alternative of the in-product kind.
💡Tip: Admins can set catalog house owners because the default electronic mail vacation spot for all catalogs by way of a toggle within the workspace admin web page.
Request permissions proper from the place you’re employed in Databricks
As soon as locations are set, your customers can request permissions from a number of in-product surfaces:
- Catalog Explorer: Request entry to things you may browse (by way of the BROWSE privilege) or have a direct hyperlink to.
- Authoring surfaces: When operating a question that fails with an insufficient_permissions error, request entry to the referenced tables straight.
- AI/BI Dashboards: In dashboards with out embedded credentials, request learn entry to lacking datasets straight from the panel.
Customers can request entry for themselves or on behalf of one other consumer, group, or service principal. Requests are routinely despatched to the vacation spot arrange by the admin.
Consumer requesting entry from catalog explorer:
Consumer requesting entry from a dashboard panel:
Assessment and approve with management
When a request is made, the configured vacation spot receives all related particulars together with the requester’s title, object title, permissions requested, who the request is on behalf of (if completely different than requester), and motive for the request.
Approvers can click on Open Permission Settings to go on to the approval display, the place they’ve two choices:
- Add Principal to Group: Add the requester to a gaggle that already has permissions. Requires the group-manager position.
- Grant Privileges to Principal: Instantly grant permissions on the item to the requesting consumer or group. Requires MANAGE privilege or possession.
Utilizing the group strategy permits customers that wouldn’t have possession / MANAGE privilege on an object in Unity Catalog to approve entry requests for it. It will also be utilized by admins to maintain management over what permissions will be provisioned to customers (e.g. a gaggle with solely SELECT ensures solely learn entry is granted).
Get Began with Request for Entry
By enabling Request for Entry in Unity Catalog, you may democratize knowledge discovery, streamline knowledge entry approvals, and empower groups to work with knowledge quicker, whereas sustaining governance.
To get began:
