Importing

The import functionality allows you to create or edit data in bulk in Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud.

By importing, you can create and edit communities, domains, assets, mappings or complex relations and their characteristics such as attributes, relations and tags from a view.

Tip

For importing complex relations using an Excel file, see the knowledge base on the Collibra Support Portal.
If you want to edit a lot of assets in one go, you can perform the so-called export/import roundtrip. First create a view that contains all the assets and characteristics that you want to edit, then export the assets from that view. You can then edit the exported file, and import the assets back into the same view. Collibra will automatically map the characteristics during the import, implementing your changes.
You can also use the import functionality for integrations and synchronization with external systems. Instead of manually importing and exporting assets, you can use the Import REST API to automate the workflow. Visit the Developer Portal to learn more.

For example, you can use the import functionality to do the following:

Create assets in a new or existing domain.
Add and edit characteristics of existing assets.
Edit the display name or full name of existing assets.
Move assets to a new or existing domain.

Note

Importing assets and complex relations is restricted by the file upload settings, which define the maximum file size, allowed file extensions and maximum amount of uploads and downloads per day. Contact Collibra support if you want to change the file upload settings. The default maximum file size is 512 MB.
When importing a very large Excel file, you may encounter an error with the file being too large. If this is the case you will need to split the file into multiple smaller files or use CSV.
Importing data from a large Excel file can consume a lot of memory. We advise you to import from CSV instead of Excel, or to limit the Excel file to only contain the data you really need.

Import responsibilities

You can import responsibilities along with your assets. To do so, you map table headers in your import files to the applicable role in the same way as you map attributes. You will need to map your responsibilities during the import process for them to be included.

If you wish to import responsibilities then you will need Asset responsibilities support setting enabled.

You will also need to add the required user IDs or group IDs to the corresponding role in the file (one ID per row) and save it.

If you want to ensure you have the right format for import then you can export the asset table, ensuring you add the required role column to the view first.

Tip You can find the required IDs from the relevant table, e.g. the user IDs from the Users table and the group IDs from the Groups table. These will be labeled on their respective tables as Resource ID.

Updated import guidelines

Before you can use the improved import experience, you will need to ensure your import file meets these updated guidelines:

Provide an asset type.
Provide a domain and/or community.
Provide relation information, for example, asset name, type, domain, domain type, and community.
Remove any unnecessary leading or trailing spaces.

There are some known issues that will be fixed in 2023.04 or later.

Difference between the old and new import process

There are a number of differences and improvements between the old (v1) and new (v2) import process.

Scenario	Old (v1) import process	New (v2) import process
You don’t provide an asset type for the import.	The asset type defaults to Business Asset on import.	There is no default. You'll see an error message and the import is canceled.
You start the import from a community page but do not specify the community in the import file.	The import defaults to the current community.	No default community is assumed, and the import will be unable to proceed. This is to prevent unintentional and incorrect community imports.
You start the import from a domain page but do not specify the domain in the import file.	The import defaults to the current domain.	No default domain is assumed, and the import will be unable to proceed. This is to prevent unintentional and incorrect domain imports.
Multiple relations are imported, but they do not all contain the full relation information.	Any partial information is ignored and the import continues successfully.	An error notifies you that there is missing information for the relations and the import is canceled.
Your file contains ambiguous relations, that have no clear path to mapping.	Relations with no clear match are auto-mapped to the first matching relation.	Only relations that are uniquely identified get auto-mapped. If the is no unique identifier then auto-mapping will not happen and you will need to manually map the relation.
You want to import responsibilities with your assets.	You cannot import responsibilities.	You can import responsibilities if you enable the Asset responsibilities support setting.
Your file contains whitespace around the content.	The content of cells is are trimmed, so the whitespace before and after the content is removed.	There is no trimming of content.