Publish and Approve Reference Data

This guide covers the governance workflows for publishing and approving reference data changes to ensure data quality and controlled access.

Understanding the publishing workflow

Reference data follows a specific lifecycle to ensure data quality and governance:

Draft state: New or modified records start in draft state.
Review and approval: Records must be reviewed and approved before publication.
Published state: Only published records are available in the Catalog for rules and transformations.

Publish changes

To publish changes to reference data records:

Make your changes to records of a table (add, edit, or delete).
On the table’s Data tab, select the changed record.
Select Request review.
Fill out the Request review form, and then select Submit.
After the request is approved by a user with publishing rights, the record is published in the Catalog.

What happens when you publish

Published changes are automatically made available in the Catalog, which enables:

Rules using your reference data.
Global search discovery alongside other data assets.
Use in data transformations across the platform.
Sharing reference data with your entire organization.

Publishing considerations

Source of truth: Reference Data remains the source of truth for both data and metadata. To edit reference data or its metadata, you must go to Manage data > Reference Data.
Only published records: Tables become available in the Catalog once their data is published in Reference Data. Only published records (not drafts) are accessible through the Catalog.
Automatic updates: When reference data changes in the Reference data module, rules using that data will be updated according to your selected update strategy.
Structure changes: If you change the structure of a reference data table (add, remove, or rename columns), you must apply the schema change before the updates will be reflected in the Catalog.

For detailed information about using reference data in Catalog, see Work with Published Reference Data.

Approve and publish changes

Users with Approver or Owner roles can review and approve changes before they are published. This ensures data quality and governance through a controlled approval process.

Approve changes in bulk

To approve multiple changes at once:

Go to the relevant reference data table.
Go to Data > In review.

This displays all records that are pending approval.
Select the records that you want to approve.
Select Approve.

The approved changes are immediately published and become available in the Catalog.

Approve individual changes

You can also approve changes individually directly from the table view:

Go to the reference data table with pending changes.
Go to Data > In review..
In the table, locate the records with changes that need approval.
Select the Approve icon inline in the table for each record you want to approve.

Alternatively, you can select the Reject icon to discard individual changes.

Reject changes

If you need to reject changes:

Follow the same steps as for approval, but select Reject instead of Approve.
When you reject a change, it is discarded and the record returns to its previous published state.

What happens after approval

Approved changes: Are immediately published and become available in the Catalog for use in rules and transformations.
Rejected changes: Are discarded, and the record maintains its previous published state.

Next steps

After publishing and approving your reference data:

Use across the platform: Work with Published Reference Data.
Validate data quality: Improve Data Quality.
Learn best practices: Best Practices.

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