Data Atlas — User Guide

01Core Concepts

Data Atlas is a governed data catalogue inside Jira. Everything in Data Atlas is a Jira work item — this means every asset has full Jira history, ownership fields, and workflow lifecycle built in.

Governed asset

A Jira work item representing a business term, data element, KPI, system, information flow, report, dashboard, or policy.

Catalogue

A business-friendly view of governed assets for glossary and data dictionary use.

Register

The operational table for searching, filtering, opening, and managing assets.

Review queue

The stewardship queue for assets that need review, owner assignment, or classification.

Requests

Intake work from the service portal or service project that needs steward triage.

Lineage

Relationships between assets: sourced from, feeds into, derived from, governed by, reports on, and is about.

02Browse the Catalogue

Open Catalog to explore governed assets as a glossary or data dictionary. Use it to answer business questions:

What does this term mean?
Which KPIs are governed?
Which reports are catalogued?
Which systems or flows support a business area?

Data Atlas catalogue showing governed data assets grouped for business glossary use.

The Catalogue view — a business-friendly glossary of governed terms, KPIs, systems, reports, and policies.

03Search the Register

Open Register when you need the complete operational view. Search by name, Jira key, or definition, then filter by type, business owner, classification, domain, platform, or status.

Search for the asset by business name or Jira key.
Apply filters to narrow by domain, platform, classification, or owner.
Open the asset detail drawer.
Review metadata, ownership, status, and relationships.

Data Atlas governed asset register with filters and a table of data assets.

The Register — filter governed assets by type, owner, domain, classification, platform, and status.

Data Atlas asset detail drawer showing a governed information flow record.

The asset detail drawer — ownership, lifecycle, metadata, and linked relationships in one view.

04Review Governance Health

Open Dashboard to understand the current health of the Data Atlas project. The dashboard surfaces gaps and activity in one place so stewards know where to act.

Assets missing business owners
Assets missing classification
Overdue or missing review dates
Recently modified assets
New stewardship activity

The governance health dashboard — ownership gaps, classification gaps, overdue reviews, and stewardship activity at a glance.

05Work the Review Queue

Open Review queue when acting as a data steward. The queue focuses attention on assets due for governance review and assets with incomplete stewardship metadata.

Assign or confirm the business owner.
Assign or confirm the data steward.
Confirm the classification and sensitivity.
Confirm review date and cadence.
Update definitions or relationships where needed.

Data Atlas review queue listing governed assets and review actions.

The review queue — assets awaiting review, ownership assignment, or classification are surfaced here for steward action.

06Raise a Governance Request

Use the Portal link when Data Atlas is connected to a Jira Service Management project. The branded portal supports four request types:

Request a new measure or metric
Request a new business term or data definition
Request a new report or dashboard
Propose a change to an existing asset

Data Atlas service portal showing request types.

The Data Atlas service portal — business users raise governed data requests here, which route directly into the stewardship queue.

💡

Tip: If your organisation has an existing service portal, Data Atlas request types may already be available there — check with your Jira admin before creating a new portal request.

07Import Assets

Open Import to onboard assets in bulk using a CSV template. Import updates changed records and creates new ones — it will never delete records absent from the file.

Download the CSV template from Import → Download CSV template.
Populate one row per asset — include issue type, name, definition, classification, domain, platform, and relationship columns where available.
Upload the completed CSV.
Map CSV columns to Data Atlas fields.
Validate the import and review any errors.
Check and resolve duplicate matches.
Execute the import.

The import screen — download the template, upload, map columns, validate, and execute.

Step-by-step import screens:

Step 1 — Upload

Step 2 — Map

Step 3 — Validate

Step 4 — Duplicates

Step 5 — Ready

08Explore Lineage

Open Lineage to see how governed assets relate to each other. Use the lineage graph to answer questions about upstream sources, downstream consumers, and governing policies.

Which source systems feed a KPI?
Which reports consume this data element?
Which policy governs this asset?
Which assets pass through an integration flow?

The lineage impact graph — trace sourced from, feeds into, derived from, governed by, and reports on relationships between assets.

09Ask Steward (Rovo)

Use Ask Steward for guided questions about governance health, ownership gaps, classification gaps, overdue reviews, and next actions. Rovo is an assistant over the Jira-backed catalogue — it does not replace steward approval or governance decisions.

Example prompts:

Summarise governance health for this Data Atlas project.

Which assets have missing owners?

Which reports depend on customer data?

What should stewards review next?

⚠️

Known limitation: Rovo depends on the Forge action endpoints being healthy in the tenant. If Ask Steward is unresponsive, contact your Jira admin to verify the Data Atlas Rovo actions are enabled.