Adding and editing records and entities in IBM Master Data Management

You can manually create records in the IBM Master Data Management system from the master data workspace. You can also edit existing records or entities.

Required permissions
To complete these tasks, you must be a member of the DataSteward or DataEngineer user groups for the IBM Master Data Management service.

Adding a record

To create a record from the master data workspace:

  1. From the Master data navigation menu, click Search search icon to open the master data search page.

  2. To add a record, click Add record.

  3. Choose a record type for this new record, such as Person or Organization. If there isn't an appropriate record type in the list, then you might need to edit your data types to add one.

  4. Define a value for the mandatory record source attribute.

  5. Click Add attribute to add new attributes from your existing data type definitions. Choose an attribute and provide the appropriate values. Repeat this step as needed until you are satisfied that the record is complete.

    If you are working with data from a governed catalog, a shield icon shield icon indicates masked data next to an attribute name indicates that you do not have permission to add this type of attribute because of an existing data protection rule.

  6. Click Save.

Editing a record

To edit a record from the master data workspace:

  1. From the Master data navigation menu, click Search search icon to open the master data search page.

  2. On the Search tab, select Records from the menu beside the search bar to ensure that your search returns individual records.

    If you search for entities instead, you'll need to expand an entity in the search results to edit a record within it.

  3. Use a simple or advanced search to locate the record that you want to edit, and then select it from your search results. The record details panel opens.

  4. Click the edit icon edit icon to edit the record.

  5. From the Edit record screen, make the necessary changes:

    • Select and change the values of existing attributes.
    • Click Add attribute to add new attributes from your existing data type definitions. Choose an attribute and provide the appropriate values.
    • Delete attributes if necessary.

    If you are working with data from a governed catalog, a shield icon shield icon indicates masked data next to an attribute name indicates that you do not have permission to add or edit this type of attribute because of an existing data protection rule.

  6. To complete your edits, click Save.

Editing an entity

Depending on whether an entity type is configured to persist, you can edit different attributes of an entity.

If the type of entity that you are editing is configured to persist, you can edit all of an entity's attributes, even if its values were originally derived from the entity's member records by using attribute composition rules. For information about entity persistence, see Data concepts in IBM Master Data Management.

Some types of attributes are not composited from member records, and are instead defined through the entity type in your data type definitions. These are called entity attributes, and can be edited even if the entity type is not configured to persist. If the type of entity you are editing is not configured to persist, then you can only edit entity attributes that were defined as part of the entity type. You cannot edit attributes that were derived by using attribute composition rules.

When you modify the value of any entity-level attribute, the attribute gets marked with a User Overridden tag. Once overridden, the attribute’s value is preserved and will never be updated by the system unless the override is explicitly removed, even if the entity's member records change.

To edit an entity from the master data workspace:

  1. From the Master data navigation menu, click Search search icon to open the master data search page.

  2. On the Search tab, select Entities from the menu beside the search bar to ensure that your search returns entities.

  3. Search for the entity that you want to edit.

  4. Access the actions menu by hovering over the row of the entity you want to edit, then choose Edit.

  5. From the Edit entity screen, make the necessary changes:

    • Click Add attribute to add a new attribute to this entity from your existing entity type definition. Choose an attribute and provide the appropriate values.
    • Click the action menu of an attribute and select Edit to change the value. If you edit a composited attribute, the attribute receives a User Overridden tag.
    • Click the action menu of an attribute and select Delete to delete it if necessary.

    To remove a manually defined value from an attribute and clear the User Overridden tag, click the attribute's action menu and select Restore defaults. The attribute will revert to the composited value derived from the entity's member records.

    If you are working with data from a governed catalog, a shield icon shield icon indicates masked data next to an attribute name indicates that you do not have permission to add or edit this type of attribute because of an existing data protection rule.

  6. To complete your edits, click Save.

Next steps

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