Asset Promotion via Import and Export

Asset promotion enables automated migration of critical data quality assets across environments (DEV → TEST → PROD) with minimal manual intervention.

Promote monitoring projects, rules, transformation plans, and catalog items while ensuring compliance, integrity, and efficiency.

What is asset promotion

Asset promotion via import and export is designed for controlled deployments with audit trails and tamper-proof archives. It enables DevOps best practices and regulatory compliance required by highly regulated industries.

Asset promotion allows you to:

Export monitoring projects with complete configurations and dependencies.
Export individual DQ rules with automatic dependency resolution.
Export transformation plans for data processing workflows.
Automatically remap environment-specific values (connections, schemas, database names).
Generate comprehensive audit trails for every promotion.
Perform incremental updates without rebuilding entire projects.

Asset promotion is critical for organizations in regulated industries (finance, insurance, pharmaceutical industry) where manual promotion of assets is error-prone and difficult to audit.

Supported assets for promotion

The following asset types can be promoted across environments using built-in export plans:

Monitoring projects: Complete projects with all checks, schedules, configurations, and dependent rules and transformation plans.
DQ rules: Individual rules with dependencies (terms, dimensions, lookup items).
Transformation plans: Transformation workflows in ONE.
DQ firewalls: Data quality firewall configurations.
Terms: Business glossary terms with detection rules and other dependencies.
Lookup items: Reference data used in rules (full export or ID mappings only).
Catalog items: Including SQL catalog items and virtual catalog items.
Remediation projects: Data remediation project configurations.

All promoted assets appear in the DQ firewall report when enabled.

What gets exported during promotion

When you export assets for promotion, different components are handled in different ways.

Components moved unchanged

These components are included directly in the export and imported without changes into the target environment:

Anomaly detection checks
Structure checks
DQ rules (expressions, components, lookups)
Post-processing plans (ONE- and Desktop-based)
Scheduler configurations
Notification settings
Linked glossary terms
Desktop components (component rules, post-processing components, and transformation components)
Filters
Data slices
Report sections

Components automatically re-mapped

Some components rely on environment-specific configurations. ONE automatically attempts to re-map these during import:

Catalog item links: ONE looks for matching catalog items in the target environment by ID or name.
Stewardship groups: Mapped to corresponding groups in the target environment.
Lookups built from catalog items: Re-linked to corresponding catalog items in the target environment.

If a mapping cannot be resolved (for example, a referenced catalog item does not exist), the import reports a conflict that requires manual resolution.

Components not exported by default

Monitoring project permissions: Roles are exported (but not concrete users). Permissions typically differ per environment but can be included in the export if needed.
Connection credentials: Must be configured separately in the target environment for security reasons.
Lookup files: Must be exported and imported separately.
Execution history: Only configurations are exported, not historical results.

When promoting a monitoring project, all dependent assets are automatically included. DQ rules, glossary terms, SQL catalog items, virtual catalog items, and post-processing plans used in the monitoring project are promoted as part of it.

Audit trail and compliance

Every asset promotion creates a comprehensive audit trail:

Export and import audit: Records who promoted what, when, and between which environments (for both export and import).
Change tracking: Automatically creates new versions with promotion metadata.
History tab: Each imported asset (monitoring project, rule, or other entity) records the import event on its History tab with a link to the Import Report.
Approval tracking: Tracks validation and approval steps.

The audit trail includes:

User identity (username and user ID)
Timestamp (export and import times)
Asset list (all promoted assets with IDs)
Validation results (success, warnings, errors)
Environment mappings applied
Any manual interventions

Audit trail information is retained according to your data retention policies and can be exported for compliance reporting.

Use the audit trail to maintain a complete record of all promotions. For anything not captured automatically, such as the reason for the promotion or approvals outside ONE, consider maintaining a supplementary log as part of your change management process.

Recommendations

Follow a staged promotion path (DEV → TEST → PROD) to validate assets and minimize risk before production deployment.

When transferring exports between environments, use 256-bit AES encryption to protect sensitive metadata and ensure compliance. Note that the default encryption level is set to No encryption.

Next steps

To promote assets across environments, follow these steps in order:

Prepare for Asset Promotion - Check permissions, prepare your target environment, and review asset-specific behavior.
Configure Environment Mapping - Set up mappings if your environments do not follow standard naming conventions.
Promote Assets - Export, import, and verify your assets.
Resolve Import Conflicts - Resolve any conflicts or errors from the import.

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