Best way to include documentation with datasets

user11559

Hi All,

 

I have imported a variety of datasets and built many cards for my company. I am starting to communicate these out with the rest of my company, and I anticipate other people using the datasets I have pulled in to build more cards. I would like to clearly associate documentation for each dataset (field definitions and other general information) with the dataset, not just in a text box on a dashboard. Does anyone have any best practices from similar situations? Or recommendations on how to manage the roll-out process?

 

Thanks so much!

 

Sean

guitarhero23

Personally I'd say it depends on how much detail you want to include with the datasets. In Domo you're a little limited in that you basically have the Description field to work with to describe the overall dataset and you can tag each column in a dataset with some value. If that's enough than you can work to build that out, otherwise if you need more documentation surrounding each dataset you might want to create some sort of Data Definition Specification. I started one for some of my more popular datasets to describe each column, since unless you happen to be the admin for the system it's coming from you probably won't know the significance of every single column in the dataset. I did this in Confluence but had it in a Word doc on SharePoint previously.

 

Ex. 

Ashleigh

There is also a description field for columns in the schema section of a dataset. I usually put a little description for the dataset describing what it is and briefly how it was made. It is also nice to have a dataset lineage library using the Domo Governance Datasets. We have a table with all of our dataflows along with their inputs and outputs. We have another table that shows all the datasets and the cards they power. We also have another one that shows all the column names, this might be useful if someone is looking for a certain field but they are not sure what dataset it lives in.

One thing we have done to connect documentation is by creating a documentation page that contains word docs in card form. You can then link the documentation card to the cards powered by that dataset or you could put the link to the documentation card in the dataset description.

guitarhero23

Personally I'd say it depends on how much detail you want to include with the datasets. In Domo you're a little limited in that you basically have the Description field to work with to describe the overall dataset and you can tag each column in a dataset with some value. If that's enough than you can work to build that out, otherwise if you need more documentation surrounding each dataset you might want to create some sort of Data Definition Specification. I started one for some of my more popular datasets to describe each column, since unless you happen to be the admin for the system it's coming from you probably won't know the significance of every single column in the dataset. I did this in Confluence but had it in a Word doc on SharePoint previously.

 

Ex. 

Ashleigh

There is also a description field for columns in the schema section of a dataset. I usually put a little description for the dataset describing what it is and briefly how it was made. It is also nice to have a dataset lineage library using the Domo Governance Datasets. We have a table with all of our dataflows along with their inputs and outputs. We have another table that shows all the datasets and the cards they power. We also have another one that shows all the column names, this might be useful if someone is looking for a certain field but they are not sure what dataset it lives in.

One thing we have done to connect documentation is by creating a documentation page that contains word docs in card form. You can then link the documentation card to the cards powered by that dataset or you could put the link to the documentation card in the dataset description.