Usage moderation and management
The current license model provides an in-depth and personalized approach to user and asset moderation, which allows you to match your Collibra experience to your organizational and budgetary requirements.
At the core of the license model are three user types:
| User type | Description |
|---|---|
| Viewer |
A Viewer license allows users to access and browse Collibra Data Intelligence Platform, add comments, ratings, create collections, create and share views, dashboards and search filters for Usage Analytics dashboards, or start workflows. You can have an unlimited number of users with Viewer licenses. |
|
Contributor |
A Contributor license allows users to browse and request access to data products, participate in data product improvement or curation workflows, offer valuable feedback on the quality or issues related to data products, and assist Creator users with final certifications and approvals that do not require them to modify or create assets You decide how many Contributor licenses you need. |
| Creator |
A Creator license allows users full access to all the available products and capabilities, including creating, editing and deleting assets, and managing the environment settings. A number of Creator licenses is already included in every package, though you can add more if required. |
You can see an overview of the total number of licenses that you are entitled to and their current consumption in 
Settings → Seats.
Tip Disabled user accounts do not count towards your license consumption.
Learn more about user licenses.
Assets
The number of assets that your platform can have is determined primarily by the number of Creator licenses, however if your organization relies more on automation, you can keep the Creator number to a minimum and add asset bundles:
- 58,000 assets for each Creator license that is part of your package or that you have additionally purchased.
- Additional asset bundles that you have purchased.
Learn more about the Assets page.
User and license management
License assignment is an automatic process. You cannot assign licenses individually. Instead, Collibra calculates the required license type for each user. At any moment, a user has the maximum license type required by any permission included in any role that the user has. For example, if a user has a role with a permission that requires a Contributor license and another role with a permission that requires the Creator license, that user occupies a Creator seat.
Roles and permissions
A permission is the authorization to access a Collibra application or function, or to view or edit a resource. Each permission has a required license and this is the only direct connection to a license type.
Important You cannot assign permissions directly to users.
A role is a collection of permissions that you can assign to user groups or, exceptionally, to users. Roles inherit the highest license type from the permissions they contain. Groups inherit the highest license type from the roles they have while users inherit the highest license type from the groups they belong to and this determines the license consumption.
The diagram demonstrates how Collibra determines license types at different levels for global roles and permissions:
- The roles group permissions with different license types and inherit the highest license type: Role A has Creator from Permission A, while Role B and Role C have Contributor from Permission C and Permission E, respectively.
- Role A and Role B are assigned to Group A, which inherits the higher Creator license from Role A.
- Role C is assigned to Group B, which inherits the Contributor license.
- User A is a member of Group A and inherits the Creator license from Group A.
- User B is a member of both Group A and Group B and inherits the higher Creator license from Group A.
- User C is a member of Group B and inherits the Contributor license from Group B.
Learn more about roles and permissions.
Tracking changes
As you make changes that have an impact on the license consumption, the Updating Responsibilities dialog box presents a summary of the changes to the number of Contributor or Creator seats as a result of the action you are about to perform.
Use the Assets and Seats reports to keep an eye of the past a current usage. For detailed, real-time changes to the number Contributor and Creator seats, use the daily License Change History.
Resource permissions and responsibilities
A responsibility is the assignment of one or more users or user groups to a resource role for a resource.
Based on their responsibilities, users can act on the permissions conveyed to them via the resource role.
For optimal performance and ease of use, add responsibilities mainly on domains and communities and not directly on assets. Adding responsibilities directly on large amounts of assets may lead to decreased performance.
Opt for assigning responsibilities to groups rather than individuals at the highest possible level. As your governance structure stabilizes, leverage the Request responsibility feature to:
- Assign individual responsibilities for short-term changes.
- Add the requesters to groups that already have the necessary responsibilities for long-term changes.
- Spread the governance management effort to the approver roles of the Request responsibility feature.
Managing users
Take advantage of SCIM to manage users and, more importantly, groups. Instead of manually creating groups and group memberships, manage them via your Identity Provider. Once the groups are provisioned, start from either of the following scenarios, depending on your use-case.
Simple scenario
This approach allows you to get started immediately and have a very tight grip on license consumption:
- Create three all-encompassing global roles for Viewers, Contributors, and Creators.
- Assign permissions based on the required licenses to your three roles.
- Leverage the out-of-the-box Everyone group for the Viewers group.
- Add your SCIM groups to Contributors and Creators as required.
Complex scenario
This approach takes advantage of the global roles that come with Collibra:
- Leverage the out-of-the-box Everyone group for global roles with Viewer permissions.
- Add your SCIM groups to the out-of-the-box roles that you require.
General considerations
When opting for out-of-the-box global or resource roles, use as few as possible and add extra permissions as needed if you don't require a finely detailed split of responsibilities. Because you cannot delete roles that are included with Collibra, once you have reached the desired setup, mark any remaining roles as not in use to let your colleagues know to avoid them.
Note We use some of the out-of-the-box roles in our workflows. If you end up not using one particular role that is included in a workflow, modify the workflow configuration variables to include a similar role that you are using.
Allowance limits
The Seats and Assets Settings pages are specifically designed to help you keep an eye on your license and asset consumption, which Collibra calculates as follows:
- The seats and assets data is automatically refreshed every hour.
- Consumption is evaluated every week.
- A week starts at 00:00 UTC every Monday.
- You benefit from a 20% buffer that helps you bring back usage withing the allowance of your package.
- Exceeding a 120% usage during more than 9 consecutive weeks triggers limitations for user or asset management.
- The limitations are automatically removed after one week of normal usage.
Seats
Viewer seats are unlimited while the number of
The number of allocated Contributor or Creator seats has a 20% buffer to help you manage consumption after exceeding the purchased amount. When the assigned seats go over 120% for these licenses, for more than 9 consecutive weeks, you can no longer:
- Assign responsibilities to a role that requires that license.
- Add members to a global role that requires that license.
- Add users to a group with a role that requires that license.
Assets
As your organization reaches the maximum number of allocated assets, you can take action to purchase additional asset bundles or add more users to increase your asset allowance.
The number of allocated assets has a 20% buffer to help you manage consumption after exceeding the entitled amount. When the total number of assets goes over 120%, for more than 9 consecutive weeks, you can no longer:
- Manually create new assets using the global create function.
- Import assets in bulk through the asset import wizard.
- Register new data sources in Data Catalog and Data Lineage.
Options
Managing usage means either reducing the number of seats or assets, or purchasing additional packages that would accommodate the current usage. Using your Identity Provider to manage groups and adopting simple group schemas allow you the perform bulk changes that have a more meaningful impact on seat consumption.
In exceptional cases, for example when administrators that manage users are not available to bring back usage to normal, contact your Collibra Customer Success Manger.