Setting up the IBM Knowledge Catalog service

The IBM Knowledge Catalog service is provisioned automatically with a Lite plan when you sign up for Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. To set up IBM Knowledge Catalog for an organization, you start with upgrading the service and assigning IBM Knowledge Catalog roles to users in your IBM Cloud account. Within Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, an administrative user must create catalogs and the top-level categories for governance artifacts, and then add collaborators with the appropriate roles to each.

If you have a IBM Knowledge Catalog Lite plan, your capabilities are limited and some of these tasks are not applicable.

Upgrade the service to the appropriate plan

Required permissions: You must be the IBM Cloud account owner or administrator.

To upgrade IBM Knowledge Catalog:

Determine the IBM Knowledge Catalog service plan that you need. The features and functionality of IBM Knowledge Catalog vary considerably across the service plans. See IBM Knowledge Catalog service plans.
While logged in to Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, from the main menu, click Services > Service instances.
Click the menu next to the IBM Knowledge Catalog service and choose Upgrade service.
Choose the plan you want and click Upgrade.

Enable data lineage

To enable Manta Data Lineage:

While logged in to Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, from the main menu, click Services > Service instances.
Click the menu next to the IBM Knowledge Catalog service and choose Manage.
Click Launch manage services > Edit enabled services.
Select Data lineage from the list and save your preferences.

Assign IBM Knowledge Catalog roles to users or access groups

Required permissions: You must be the IBM Cloud account owner or administrator. Make sure that object storage is configured to allow users to create catalogs and projects. See Setting up IBM Cloud Object Storage for use with Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.

After you add users to your IBM Cloud account, you must assign the appropriate IAM service and platform level roles to provide permissions for IBM Knowledge Catalog. You have two choices for assigning roles:

Set up IAM access groups with a set of roles and add users as members of the access group. All members have the same roles which are updated when the group is updated. For instructions on creating access groups, see IBM Cloud docs: Setting up access groups.
Assign roles to individual users. To update roles, you must update each user independently.

Assigning access with access groups

For each access group, create an access policy by assigning service access and platform access roles.

From the Access tab for the group, click Assign access+.
For Service, choose IBM Cloud Pak for Data. The Service roles for IBM Cloud Pak for Data apply to IBM Knowledge Catalog.
Next, assign a Service access role for the group. You can create a separate group for each role, for example:
- Assign the Manager role to an access group called Manager for users who are responsible for creating top-level categories and creating catalogs.
- Assign the Data Steward or Data Engineer role to access groups for users who are responsible for creating governance artifacts and curating data into catalogs.
- Assign the Data Scientist role to access groups for users who need to use catalog assets in projects.
Assign the Editor role for Platform access role to each group. The Editor role can perform all platform actions except for managing the account and assigning access policies.
Add and Assign the policy for the access group.
Add users to the group who require the access dictated by the group policy.

To add users to an access group, you choose a group in the IBM Cloud account and then add users. Follow these steps:

From Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, choose Administration > Access (IAM) to open the Manage access and users page in your IBM Cloud account.
Select Access groups to see a list of available groups.
Select the access group that you want to populate with users and click Add users+ to show the list of users.
Checkmark the members for the access group and click Add to group.

If you do not have access groups yet, you can create them:

From Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, choose Administration > Access (IAM) to open the Manage access and users page in your IBM Cloud account.
On the Access groups page, click Create+.
Provide a unique name of the group and optionally a description that describes the group's role.
Click Create and then add users to the group.

Assigning access to individual users

To assign IBM Knowledge Catalog roles to users who are already in your IBM Cloud account:

From Cloud Pak for Data as a Service, choose Administration > Access (IAM) to open the Manage access and users page in your IBM Cloud account.
Select the user on the Users page.
Click the Access tab and then choose either Assign group+ or Assign access+.
For Assign group+, select one or more Access groups for the user, then Add and Assign them to the group.
To Assign access to an individual user, create an Access policy.
For Service, choose IBM Cloud Pak for Data. The Service roles for IBM Cloud Pak for Data apply to IBM Knowledge Catalog.
Next, select one of the Service access roles:
- Assign the Manager role to users who are responsible for creating top-level categories, creating catalogs, and generating reports about IBM Knowledge Catalog data.
- Assign the Data Steward or Data Engineer role to users who are responsible for creating governance artifacts and curating data into catalogs.
- Assign the Data Scientist role to users who need to use catalog assets in projects.
For Platform access, assign the Editor role role to each user. The Editor role can perform all platform actions except for managing the account and assigning access policies.
Add and Assign the policy for the user.

Develop a plan for implementing data governance

As a IBM Knowledge Catalog administrator, you must perform other set up tasks for IBM Knowledge Catalog, such as creating catalogs. You must understand the choices that you have and the implications of those choices before you start.

See Planning to implement data governance and Planning to set up IBM Knowledge Catalog.

Next steps

Finish the remaining steps for setting up the platform.

Parent topic: Setting up the platform for administrators