How to export assets

Atlan enables you to export all your assets or a filtered subset of assets to spreadsheets. Atlan currently supports exporting assets to:

• Google Sheets
• Microsoft Excel online

Once your Atlan admin has integrated a supported tool, you will be able to export your assets and asset metadata to spreadsheets. Your existing permissions and access policies in Atlan will determine whether you can export assets, but at a minimum you'll require read permission on the assets you want to export.

For example, you can:

• Export a list of assets that need enrichment and share the spreadsheet widely to crowdsource documentation.
• Export your business glossary and bring everyone up to speed on commonly used terminology across the organization.

To export impacted assets, see How to download and export lineage.

Supported assets for export

You can export assets from the following tabs:

Assets tab

• All assets
• Filtered subset of assets
• Child assets such as columns or fields from the parent asset profile

Glossary tab

• Glossary profile — all categories and terms within a glossary
• Category profile — all direct subcategories and terms within a category
• Term profile — linked assets for terms from the Linked Assets tab

Reporting tab

• Assets dashboard — total assets, archived assets, assets by certificates, SQL assets, assets without enrichment, assets with lineage, and assets with announcements
• Glossary dashboard — linked assets for terms
• Insights dashboard — query assets with certificate
• Usage & Cost dashboard — suggested assets for deprecation

Enable asset export

The export icon or button will only be visible if your Atlan admin has integrated a supported tool. If you cannot see the export icon or button, reach out to your Atlan admin to integrate Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

Atlan uses the following permissions to integrate supported tools:

• Google Sheets:
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file — allows the app to see, edit, create, and delete only specific Google Drive files used with the Google Sheets app. This enables Atlan to create and update spreadsheets with exported assets. Refer to Google documentation.
• Microsoft Excel:
  • Files.ReadWrite — allows the app to read, create, update, and delete the signed-in user's OneDrive files. This enables Atlan to create and update spreadsheets with exported assets. Note that access is restricted to the signed-in user's files — Atlan does not access any shared files. Refer to Microsoft documentation.
  • offline_access — allows the app to access resources on behalf of the users, even when users are not currently using the app. Refer to Microsoft documentation.
  • User.Read — allows users to sign in to the app, and allows the app to read the profile of signed-in users. This enables Atlan to authenticate the user. Atlan only supports authenticating with an organizational account. Refer to Microsoft documentation.

To integrate a supported tool for exporting assets:

1. From the left menu of any screen, click Admin.
2. Under the Workspace heading, click Integrations.
3. To connect Atlan to a supported tool for exporting assets:
   • In the Google Sheets tile, click the Connect button. A sign-in dialog will appear and you will be redirected to sign in with your Google account. From the corresponding screen, click Allow to integrate Atlan with Google Sheets.
   • In the Microsoft Excel title, click the Connect button. A sign-in dialog will appear and you will be redirected to sign in with your Microsoft account to integrate Atlan with Microsoft Excel.

Your users can now export assets from Atlan! 🎉

Export assets

Atlan allows you to export your assets to spreadsheets and view asset metadata in bulk.

At a tenant level, Atlan supports running five exports concurrently for each supported tool. If both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel have been integrated, a total of 10 concurrent exports is supported. At an individual user level, only one export is allowed for each supported tool at a time, the rest will be auto-queued for execution.

To export your assets:

1. From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets.
2. To export assets, in the Assets page, you can either:
   • Next to the search bar, click the 3-dot icon and then click Export to export all assets.
   • Apply any filters, click the 3-dot icon, and then click Export to export a list of filtered assets.
3. The Export dialog displays a total count of assets available for export:
   • Click Google Sheets to export your assets to a Google Sheets spreadsheet.
   • Click Microsoft Excel to export your assets to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
4. A sign-in dialog will appear and you will be redirected to sign in with your Google or Microsoft account. From the corresponding screen, click Allow to connect to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
5. To track the progress of the export, you can either:
   • In the Export in progress popup, click Open Sheets or Open Excel to navigate to the spreadsheet. The Queued status will change to Success once assets have been exported.
   • Click the 3-dot icon and then click Export to view asset export in progress, along with an estimated time of completion. (Optional) To cancel the export, hover over In queue and click the Stop button.
6. On the spreadsheet, you will be able to view the following details and asset metadata:
   • Status — export status and total count of assets exported
   • Title — asset name and link
   • Type — asset type
   • Connector — name of supported source
   • Business Name (Alias) — business-oriented alias of assets, if any
   • Created By and Created At — username for user who created the asset and when it was created, only applicable to glossary exports 
   • Description — asset description, if any
   • Owner Users and Owner Groups — asset owners, if any
   • Certification Status and Certification Message — certification status of asset, if any
   • Announcement Type, Announcement Title, and Announcement Message — announcements on assets, if any
   • Tags and Propagated Tags — tags directly attached or propagated to an asset, if any
   • Terms — linked assets
   • Qualified Name — fully qualified name of the asset
   • GUID — globally unique identifier of the asset
   • Custom Metadata — customized metadata with organizational context, if any
7. (Optional) To view your asset export history, click the 3-dot icon and then click Export. From the Export dialog, expand the History dropdown to view your last 10 exports. Note that only you can currently view your own export history.

That's it, you've successfully exported your assets from Atlan! 🎉

Update metadata in spreadsheets and sync to Atlan

Once you've exported your assets, you can use the Atlan extension for spreadsheets to update metadata for exported assets and sync your updates to Atlan. Atlan currently supports updating metadata and syncing updates for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.

Google Sheets

Microsoft Excel

Update metadata

Atlan also recommends noting the following while updating metadata:

• If asset import from Atlan to a spreadsheet is in progress, avoid making any updates until the import is completed.
• You cannot make any changes to columns marked read-only or grayed out. Any changes to those columns will not be synced to Atlan and you will receive an error message.
• You can remove or change the order of assets in the spreadsheet, but you cannot add or replace it with an entirely new set of assets.
• You cannot add extra columns to the spreadsheet — sync to Atlan will fail.
• Avoid having any empty rows between assets.
• Although you can make changes in the spreadsheet while a sync is in progress, avoid starting a new sync until the current one has ended.
• You can easily collaborate with other users on the spreadsheet. However, sync to Atlan will only be recorded for the username that initiated the sync.
• Atlan uses hidden sheets to create a snapshot of the changes you've made. Refrain from making any changes in the hidden sheets.

To update metadata for exported assets in a spreadsheet:

1. Install the Atlan extension for:
   • Google Sheets
   • Microsoft Excel
2. Connect your Atlan instance to:
   • Google Sheets
   • Microsoft Excel
3. To update metadata for your exported assets:
   • You can only make changes to the metadata in the following columns:
     • Business Name (Alias)
     • Description
     • Owner Users and Owner Groups — when adding an owner user or group, they must already exist in Atlan; name match is case-sensitive, format the value exactly as it exists in Atlan; and you can add multiple owners or groups as comma-separated values.
     • Certification Status — select valid values from the dropdown.
     • Certification Message
     • Announcement Type — select valid values from the dropdown.
     • Announcement Title
     • Announcement Message
     • Tags — when adding a tag, it must already exist in Atlan; name match is case-sensitive, format the value exactly as it exists in Atlan; and you can add multiple tags as comma-separated values.
     • Terms — when adding a term, it must already exist in Atlan; name match is case-sensitive, format the value exactly as it exists in Atlan; and you can add multiple terms as comma-separated values.
     • Custom Metadata — enter custom metadata values for any properties you want to enrich based on the description and expected data type and format. Atlan uses two placeholder values, N/A indicates that the custom metadata property is not applicable on a specific asset and Not Permitted indicates that the user lacks permission to make metadata updates. Atlan recommends that you do not make any changes to these values. Neither of these values will be synced to Atlan. Additionally, Atlan currently only allows you to select a single value for Options data type when updating from spreadsheets.
   •  You cannot make the following changes:
     • Edit headers for any of the columns.
     • Edit the metadata in the following columns:
       • Title
       • Type
       • Connector, Glossary and Categories
       • Propagated Tags
       • Qualified Name
       • GUID
         
       • Created By and Created At
     • Delete any columns or rows.
     🚨 Careful! Any of these changes will not be pushed to Atlan and you'll receive an error message.

Sync to Atlan

To sync your metadata updates to Atlan:

1. To sync your metadata updates:
   • For Google Sheets, in the menu bar of your Google Sheets spreadsheet, click Extensions. From the dropdown menu, click Atlan and then click Sync to Atlan.
   • For Microsoft Excel, in the menu bar of your Microsoft Excel workbook, click Atlan. From the Atlan tab, click Sync to Atlan.
     🚨 Careful! Atlan recommends that you do not change the name of your Microsoft Excel workbook if you want to sync metadata updates to Atlan, the sync will fail otherwise. Additionally, Microsoft Excel may take longer to autosave changes on the workbook. If you notice that zero changes were detected, retry syncing after a few seconds.
2. Once the changes have synced, the Atlan sidebar will indicate completion of the sync.
3. (Optional) At the bottom of the spreadsheet, switch to the Sync-Logs tab to view a record of your changes:
   • View all changes synced to Atlan — the latest sync details will be displayed at the top of the spreadsheet.
   • Changes are displayed on an asset level. For example, even if you have updated three attributes for an asset, it will be recorded as one change per asset.
   • View the status of each update — Synced or Failed. For Failed, Atlan will display a failure message:
     • Invalid value — for unsupported values.
     • Unauthorized — you do not have the permissions to update asset metadata. 
     • Not synced due to conflict — if any attributes were updated in Atlan since the assets were last exported, Atlan will signal a conflict. In that case, you will need to export your assets once again with the latest changes to proceed.
     • If the error message does not match any of the above options, reach out to Atlan support.
   • Click any asset to verify the changes directly in Atlan.
   • In Atlan, when viewing the activity log:
     • An Updated via Google Sheets stamp will appear in the activity log for updated assets. Click the Google Sheets link to view the source spreadsheet from Atlan.
     • An Updated via Microsoft Excel stamp will appear in the activity log for updated assets. Click the Excel link to view the source spreadsheet from Atlan.