Importing business intelligence reports (Watson Knowledge Catalog)

Import business intelligence reports to govern those reports as business intelligence assets in catalogs.

In business intelligence (BI) reporting, BI tools are used to gather, analyze, and present data. Business intelligence assets are used to organize reports that provide a business view of that data. In a catalog, you can inspect the components of business intelligence reports and how they are related.

This import option is not available in projects that are marked as sensitive.

Before you import metadata, design your metadata import so that you understand all your options and make the appropriate choices for your goals. See Designing metadata imports.

You can also use APIs instead of the user interface to retrieve the list of supported connections or to create a metadata import asset. The links to these APIs are listed in the Learn more section.

Asset types
Business intelligence assets that represent components of business intelligence reports. See Asset types created through metadata import.
Supported connections
See the Metadata import (discovery) column and the Other data sources section in Supported connectors.
Required permissions
To create, manage, and run a metadata import, you must have these roles and permissions:
  • The Manage asset discovery user permission.
  • The Admin or the Editor role in the project.
  • The Admin or the Editor role in the catalog to which you want to import the assets.

Prerequisites

Before you can import a business intelligence report, create an input file and upload it to your project. See Preparing manual input for importing business intelligence reports.

Creating the metadata import asset and importing data models

To create a metadata import asset and a job for importing business intelligence reports to a catalog:

  1. Open a project, go to the project's Asset page and click New asset > Metadata Import.

  2. Select the option Import BI report and click Next. If you don't see this option, the Advanced metadata import feature is not enabled. See Installed features and license requirements.

  3. Specify a name for the metadata import. Optionally, you can provide a description.

  4. Optional: Select tags to be assigned to the metadata import asset to simplify searching. You can create new tags by entering the tag name and pressing Enter.

  5. For this type of import, the import target can be only a catalog. See Scope of import.

    Select a catalog from the list. If your project is marked as sensitive, you can't create and run data model imports.

  6. Define a scope for the metadata import. See Scope of import.

    1. Click Select scope.

    2. Depending on the reporting tool, you can select an input file or a connection to a reporting tool.

      • To select an input file from your project for the import, expand the Data asset node. You can select only one file at a time. See Preparing manual input for importing business intelligence reports.

        A report file is static. You can't update its content for a later rerun of the metadata import. To work with a new version of the report file, you must create a new metadata import.

        After you select a report file, select the reporting tool to make the proper file structure known.

      • To select a connection to a reporting tool, expand the Connection node.

  7. Define whether you want to run scheduled import jobs. If you don't set a schedule, you run the import when you save the metadata import asset. You can rerun the import manually at any time. See Scheduling options.

  8. Optional. Customize the import behavior. You can choose to prevent specific properties from being updated and to delete existing assets that are not included in the reimport. See Advanced import options.

  9. Review the metadata import configuration. To make changes, click the edit (edit icon) icon on the tile and update the settings.

  10. Click Create. The metadata import asset is added to the project, and a metadata import job is created. If you didn't configure a schedule, the import is run immediately. If you configured a schedule, the import runs on the defined schedule.

    Important:

    If the business intelligence report was already imported through a different metadata import, it is not imported anew but is updated. The business intelligence assets do no longer show up in the initial metadata import. Only the most recently run metadata import contains the assets.

Depending on the outcome of the metadata import job run, a completion message or an error notification is displayed.

A completion message is displayed when the job run completed successfully, completed with warnings, or completed with errors. An error notification is displayed if the entire job run failed. Either type of notification contains a link to the job run log that provides details about the specific job run.

When the import is complete, you can see the list of assets with the following information:

  • The asset name, which provides a link to the asset in the catalog.
  • The asset type, such as Report.
  • The asset context, such as the file path of the element.
  • The date and time that the asset was last imported.
  • The import status, which can be Imported for successfully imported data, In progress, or Removed if the asset couldn't be reimported.

In the catalog, the imported assets have a tag automatically assigned that reflects the originating reporting tool.

Learn more

Next steps

Parent topic: Importing metadata