Smarter Week

How to automate it

How to automate “grant data access and answer "where is this table?"”

Here are 2 ways to spend less time on this, best first. Each comes with steps you can follow today.

20 min
typically, every day
60%
of the time can be automated
Some setup
to set up

Fix 1 of 2

Software featureBest fix

Put tables and metrics in a searchable catalog with AI search

A data catalog (Atlan, Unity Catalog, Snowflake Horizon, DataHub, dbt Explorer) lets people find tables, owners and definitions themselves, and AI search answers "where is X?" questions.

Typically saves about 40% of the time4 h to set up
  1. 1Turn on the catalog that comes with your platform, or use Atlan or DataHub.
  2. 2Mark trusted tables, add owners, and let AI draft descriptions you then review.
  3. 3Link the catalog from your data help channel.
  4. 4Answer "where is this table?" with a catalog link until people go there first.

Tools: Atlan · Databricks Unity Catalog · Snowflake Horizon · DataHub · dbt Explorer

Fix 2 of 2

Automation

Grant data access by role and group, not person by person

When access comes from roles mapped to identity groups, new people get the right data automatically and you stop handling one-off grants.

Typically saves about 60% of the time6 h to set up
  1. 1Define a small set of data roles (for example finance analyst, marketing analyst, all-staff).
  2. 2Map each role to an identity group in Okta or Entra ID, synced to your warehouse with SCIM.
  3. 3Use row and column policies for sensitive fields instead of separate tables.
  4. 4Route exceptions through an access request with an owner approval and expiry date.

Tools: Snowflake, BigQuery or Databricks role-based access · Okta or Entra ID with SCIM · Immuta

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Data / BI analystData engineer

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