Atlan Best Practices
Creating a DataDoc template to make documentation easy (and standardized!)
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Creating a DataDoc template to make documentation easy (and standardized!)

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🤓 Why?

❓ As metadata curators come to Atlan to add context for the tables they own, sometimes they might get stuck. What information should they add to the ReadMe that can help other "datazens"?

🤕 Or, even worse, all your curators might follow different structures to document their data. This can lead to documentation chaos and a lack of standardization at the organization level.

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To solve this, some amazing DataOps champions created a DataDoc template in Atlan, which lets users start adding context with an easy-to-customize template.

📄 What is a DataDoc template?

Sales teams create "call notes" templates to ensure that sales reps collect the right information from potential customers. Managers use templated 1:1 templates to run conversations with direct reports. Engineers even use code documentation templates.

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The DataDoc template is a reusable template that captures all the "information" you want to capture about your key data assets. This makes it incredibly easy for your team's metadata curators to enrich context about a data asset by answering the customizable fields in your template.

Example of a custom DataDoc template attached to data assets in Atlan
Example of a custom DataDoc template attached to data assets in Atlan

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👉 TL;DR: Creating your own DataDoc template in Atlan

1️⃣ Start by defining your ideal "DataDoc" template.

Start by asking, what kind of information will be most helpful to the people who consume the data?

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A good starting point is going over all the questions that you and your team of metadata curators have gotten from datazens in the past few months about your data. The 5W1H framework is a great framework that we recommend to help you define your ideal DataDoc.

2️⃣ Use Atlan’s APIs to upload the custom ReadMe template.

You can use this to pre-fill data asset profiles in Atlan.

Tada! Now, when your metadata contributors log in, they won’t start with a blank slate. Instead, they can get to work editing the pre-filled template that matches the context of the data asset they are working on!

Tada! Now, when your metadata contributors log in, they won’t start with a blank slate. Instead, they can get to work editing the pre-filled template that matches the context of the data asset they are working on!

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