User licenses

A user license is the overall authorization for a user to perform certain actions in Collibra. What a user can actually do in Collibra depends on the global roles and the responsibilities of the user.

License types

The license type defines the actions a user is authorized to carry out. There are currently two license types:

License type Description

Consumer

A Consumer license is the minimum license type. It allows a user to:

Note It does not allow users to create, edit or delete resources.

You can see which global and resource permissions require a Consumer license, in Settings.

Author

An Author license is the maximum license type. It allows a user to perform all actions that require Consumer permissions, and create, view, edit and delete resources, such as:

  • Create, edit and delete assets.
  • Create, edit and delete communities, domains and responsibilities.
  • Create and share (anyone’s) application, community and domain views.
  • Create and share (anyone’s) dashboards.
  • Bulk import assets through Excel, CSV or API (Connect).
  • Manage workflows.
  • Edit the operating model, for example create, edit and delete asset types.
  • Manage users, user groups, roles and permissions.

You can see which global and resource permissions require an Author license, in Collibra Settings.

Users that have a global role with the System Administration global permission can edit the license type of other users. If those users are enabled and have a global role with at least one Product Rights global permission, they also occupy a license.

The maximum number of licenses of each type is defined in the license file.

Warning If your organization occupies more licenses than the maximum (as stipulated in your contract and identified in the license file), your administrator will receive a warning, but all users will retain access to all Collibra functionality, as determined by their roles and responsibilities. Occupying more licenses than the maximum may have financial and legal implications.

Access to Collibra Console does not require a license.

License usage

A User is a specific individual that you authorize to use the Collibra software, regardless of whether such individual is using the Collibra software at any given time. Each individual shall be assigned a unique User identification. Multiple individuals may not share the same User identification. In addition to all individual Users, all users of a non-human operated device shall be counted as User if such device has access to the Collibra software in accordance with User roles and responsibilities. Users are limited to the number set forth in the respective Order, and access to the Collibra software will be restricted to such number of Users through a license management key provided by Collibra. If a User no longer requires access to the Collibra software, you may deactivate that individual and you can designate a new individual as a User of the Collibra software without incurring additional fees.

Required license type

For each user, Collibra calculates the required license type.

The required license type is:

  • The license type that a user needs to carry out the actions available to the user via the roles and responsibilities that were assigned to the user.
  • The maximum license type of any permission included in a global role or resource role of that user.

If none of the permissions require an Author license, the required license of the user is Consumer.

Tip  You can see the required license type of all permissions in the Settings. You can also see the required license types of all permissions and the packaged global roles and resource roles in the administration guide:

Mismatches between required license type and given license type

Ideally, the given and required license types match. For example:

  • A user with a Consumer license should only have roles and responsibilities that have Consumer permissions.
  • A user with an Author license should have roles and responsibilities that have one or more Author permission.

However, a user may have responsibilities with permissions for which the user does not have the correct license type. For example, a user with a Consumer license has been assigned a responsibility that requires Author permissions.

David English is a Data Engineer. He has a user account with a Consumer license, which allows him to consult Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud. He finds some errors and reports them to his colleagues. Because he has advanced knowledge on certain topics, the administrator assigns him the Subject Matter Expert resource role for the relevant communities. With that role, he can add, edit and remove attributes of the assets in the communities. However, the Subject Matter Expert resource role requires an Author license. As a consequence, his Consumer license is insufficient. His administrator should give him an Author license.

Warning Collibra does not actively enforce the correct license type. Users with a Consumer license can still perform actions that require Author permissions, though they will see a warning message.

If there's a mismatch, consider one of the following:

  • Edit the license type of the user.
  • Remove the user from the responsibilities or groups that require a higher license type.

Actions

All users can see their own license type when they open their profile page.

An administrator can do the following:

  • View the available number of licenses per license type.
  • View and give a license to a user.