Customizable Homepage¶
Version 2020.3 and Later¶
Homepage is where users land after signing in to Alation. Its purpose is to facilitate the discovery of the Catalog content and to simplify navigation. Homepage can also be accessed any time by clicking the logo in the top left corner of the Alation application.
The homepage features quick links to prioritized and curated content and to various Alation tools, such as Compose, Search, or the new Article editor.
Homepage is enabled by default and can be customized by a Server Admin in Admin Settings > Catalog Admin section > Customize Homepage to better suit the users’ needs.
Default vs Customized Homepage
Some pages in Alation may be restricted by permissions, such as, for example, private Articles, private Sources, or unpublished Queries. If such restricted-access objects are linked to the Homepage, most users will not be able to view them and will run into the “Insufficient Permissions” error when they click the corresponding links. It is recommended to avoid adding links to restricted-access objects to the Homepage.
Versions V R4 (5.8.x) - V R7 (5.12.x)¶
A Beta feature
Starting with V R4 (5.8.x), Alation has introduced a new homepage. The old homepage only allowed minimal configuration, with two articles displayed prominently for Stewards and two different articles displayed for Analysts. Now, there is one homepage for all hats, but it allows to display many more articles and other Alation objects, both as tiles and as previews. The content on the homepage is based on the configuration file in the JSON format. If you want to update your homepage frequently, it may be worth having a scripted update mechanism.
This article gives a general overview of the three sections you can find on the Homepage in releases VR4 - VR7.
Promoted Actions Banner¶
This section appears on the top and features shortcuts to the most popular actions in Alation. From here, you can quickly reach the various workflows of your catalog. It can include links to Advanced Search with predefined filters or to Compose or to a new Article editor to segue you directly into creating content. There are alternative ways in Alation to navigate to these pages, but these shortcuts will give you a boost!
Promoted Actions Banner:
This section is not personalized to individual users — the shortcuts are the same for all.
Clicking on the tiles in this section will take you to the target page.
Revisit¶
This section is personalized based on behavior: it lists catalog pages you have recently visited, “starred” or marked as “watched”. It features tabs:
Visited - displays recently visited catalog pages
Starred - displays starred pages
Watching - displays watched pages
The links to pages appear as clickable tiles . In Revisit, the tile content corresponds to the selected tab. For example, the Starred tab will display the pages you have starred.
You can hover over a tile to reveal the description of the target page. Click the tile to navigate there.
For details on starring and watching objects in Alation, refer to Overview of a Catalog Page.
Revisit:
Curated by Your Admins¶
This section features content prepared by your Catalog Admins to be shared with all users. It can include one or more carousel and object window rows that have links to promoted resources. You can click any of the tile elements to navigate to the corresponding page.
Curated by Your Admins - a Tile Carousel:
An object window provides a read-only preview of the linked object, that can be an article, a BI report, or a Tableau sheet. To navigate to the dedicated page, click Visit Page in the top right corner of an object window.
Curated by Your Admins - Object Windows:
Permissions to View¶
Some pages in Alation may be restricted by permissions, such as, for example, private Articles or private Data Sources. This may impact the content that is visible to the specific user on the Homepage: users will not see previews or links to objects they do not have permission to view.
If a user does not have permission to view a specific object,
Tiles linked to this object will be hidden from carousels for this user. If all tiles in a carousel are hidden from a user, this carousel will not appear on their Homepage.
The object window will be hidden from Homepage if a user does not have permissions to view the linked object.
Enabling the Homepage¶
Customizable Homepage is not available by default and can be enabled by Server Admins in Labs. For more details, refer to Configure the Homepage.
Toggles for the Homepage in Labs:
Customizing the Homepage¶
To maximize the value for your Alation users, the new Homepage can be customized in each instance of Alation.
For information on how to customize, see Customize the Homepage JSON.
Sample Homepage:
