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new
improved
We are excited to announce the latest release of new features & improvements:
Automated PII Detection (Beta)
Select Star's Automated PII column detection is a feature that automatically detects columns in a dataset that contain personal information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, and other identifying data.
This helps organizations comply with privacy regulations and enhance data security while saving time and resources.

You can check more info here. This feature is currently in beta! Please reach out to support@getselectstar.com to activate this feature.
Markdown Support
Our main documentation feature now includes strong support for Markdown formatting via API. With this new release, you can now create and edit Markdown-formatted content programmatically, using our API.
You can also use markdown to write the descriptions by clicking on the markdown toggle at the bottom of the editor. Learn more about this support here.

Updating rich text descriptions via API
Select Star now supports both SlateJS and Markdown for formatting text in rich text descriptions.
To update the rich text description field via API using SlateJS format, you need to send a PATCH request to the API endpoint with the updated content in SlateJS format.
Example
Here is an example of a Python script making a request to update a rich text description:

After making this request, you’ll be able to see this in the Select Star platform as a result:

🧩 S3 Support
Our team has been hard at work to display S3 lineage for Snowflake tables. So, if a file (CSV, JSON, etc) was ingested by a Snowflake table from a S3 location, you can now see the lineage in the Upsteam tab and in Lineage Explore. 🎉
Upstream -

Lineage -

Snowflake External Table and Stage support coming soon!!
🚀 AWS Glue Integration (Beta)
Along with support for S3, we are also launching the new integration with AWS Glue. With this integration, you can view the databases and tables in your AWS Glue environment and you'll be able to see downstream table lineage for your Snowflake tables.
List of AWS Glue tables with location -

Downstream -

Lineage -

Learn more about our AWS Glue integration in the doc.
Have a great day!
-Select Star Team 🫶
improved
🏷️ API updates
We recently released a new feature to get GUID of schema, table or column when a full path is provided in the API call.
Example request -
GET https://api.production.getselectstar.com/v1/tables/?page=1&page_size=1&search_name=Snowflake.NewAdventureWorks.Person.Address&query={guid}&order=-popularity

In the example -
Snowflake.NewAdventureWorks.Person.Address is
{Select Star Data Source Name}.{Database}.{Schema}.{Table}
You can also use the columns endpoints to get the GUID for a specific column.
🔥 Tableau Updates
Based on our user feedback, we are introducing updates to our Tableau integration:
- Display underlying calculation for Datasource Fields
We now show the underlying calculation for Calculated Field within a Tableau Datasource.

- Only show Published Datasources as default
Some of you requested to only show the Published Datasources by default on our Tableau Datasource.

You can still view the embedded Tableau Datasources by checking the checkbox on the right.
- Display Downstream Dashboards for Tableau Datasources
You can now quickly see all the Tableau Workbooks utilizing a specific Tableau Datasource (for both Published and Embedded).

- View SQL for Custom SQL based Datasource
With this update, you no longer need to manually edit the workbook to view the SQL. We have improved the process of accessing the SQL that powers Custom SQL-based Tableau Datasources, making it more convenient for you.

We hope these updates will improve your experience with Select Star. Please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions with us. Have a great day!
-Select Star Team 🫶
improved
We are thrilled to unveil an exciting update to our application's font and overview section to provide better readability of table / dashboard pages:

We're putting the ownership and popularity information front & center. Also improved how this will show on smaller screens / mobile:

As we embrace the spring season in full bloom and approach the summer, we hope you will enjoy the beauty of this wonderful time of year to the fullest. 🌸🌷
Thank you for your continued support!
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👉 Power BI Updates
We are happy to announce that we have made significant changes to our Power BI integration and we now support Datasets, Reports and Dashboards, and column level linage across them.

Learn more in the doc.
👥 Analytics API for Activity Logs
This week we launched the highly requested Analytics API for Activity Logs. Previously, you were only able to view the user analytics under the Admin section, and now with this API you can get the user activity log based on various filters like start_date, end_date, types, user, etc.
Example request -
GET https://api.staging.getselectstar.com/v1/data-metrics/activities/?start_date=2022-12-01&end_date=2022-12-25&types=update

Learn more about our API and the list of filter values in the doc.
✨ Export to CSV for Database page
Lastly, we also launched a feature to provide you with the ability to download the list of all the selected tables for a database or a schema.

CSV structure currently includes the following -
- database_name
- schema_name
- table_name
- description
- description_source
- business_owner
- technical_owner
Thank you for all feedback you made so far and we are always eager to hear more of your thoughts on the features. Have a great day!
-Select Star Team 🫶
improved
Hello everyone, I hope that all our Select Star users are having a wonderful week so far. We are pleased to bring you some new updates for this week.
🏷️ Improved Nested Tag Asset Inclusion
If a tag has nested tags, all assets in the nested tags are now included in the parent tag/asset tab. This update should provide a better overview of tag-asset management.

👉 Increased API Rate Limit Options
This week we introduced a new tier for Client API Usage, in addition to our
default
limit for all organizations of 10K requests per day. This new tier allows for 100k requests per day
. For more details, please contact our Sales team.👉 Slack
We have updated the domain for Select Star's Slack application. Please visit https://slack.selectstar.com/ and click
Add to Slack
. For more details, see doc.If you have already added the Slack application, no change is required on your end.
We are one week away from descending in sunny Florida for the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit 2023. Come by our booth (1450) to meet the team, and pick up some exclusive Select Star gear.
new
improved
🌼Welcome to our first product change log in March.🌼
We're excited to announce several updates that we believe enhance your Select Star experience and also improve the overall performance of the product.
📊 Dashboard Menu
A new addition to our product's user interface - a dedicated "Dashboard" menu section in the left sidebar. Previously, users had to navigate to the "Data" section and then click through a dropdown menu to access specific BI sources.
With the new dashboard section, users can now access their BI sources directly.

In addition to these updates, we've also implemented various upgrades to enhance the overall performance of the sidebar.
🏷️ Nested Tag with Full Path
To provide greater clarity on nested tags, we've implemented a feature that displays the parent tags along with their child tags in the UI.
For example, if you have two tags, "Sales" and "Metric" tags, it can be overwhelming to track the parent tag for "Metric", in cases when it is nested under multiple tags.
Now that we show the parent-child relationship in the UI, you can easily identify where each tag comes from and identify its context within the tagging structure.

This enhancement should make it simpler for you to navigate and manage tags within Select Star.

🏷️ Metric API updates
With the continued commitment to improving our API, this month we updated our Metric API. Now, you can create a new metric with or without adding details to the parameters.
Here is the list of all the Parameters required for
POST /v1/metrics/

We have also adding a the option to update the Dimensions using
PATCH /v1/metrics/dimensions/
Parameters needed are
metric
and field
.When updating dimensions, it has be either explorefield, column or tableaufield.
Note: Invalid dimensions objects will result in a 400 error.
For more information, check out our API reference doc.
We hope these updates will enhance your experience and make our product even more useful to you. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future improvements!
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🔍 Exact vs Fuzzy Search Update
We have invested our time and effort to enhance the precision and quality of our search experience, and we are happy to announce that these efforts have yielded positive results.
Exact vs. Fuzzy Search
Improved Select Star search can help to save time and increase efficiency by reducing the number of results that need to be reviewed.
If you misspell the keyword or if the asset does not exist in the system, we'll let you know that there are 0 results found, and activate fuzzy search with similar keyword search result:


🔍 Full Path Search
As a user, I want to be able to search by full path and find exact table even if the search phrase is very long so that I can open that table page.
Our answer:
Yes, you can!

Search results are influenced by various factors, and we are constantly updating our codebase to provide the most relevant results to you.
🏷️ Team and Tag mention
Now in documents or discussions, you can mention other teams or tags you wish to refer.

Clicking on a mention will take you directly to the corresponding page, allowing you to quickly access the information you need, allowing for a smoother workflow between teams.
We have also updated our search to exclude data source users from search results. As a result, you can now easily mention individuals in a doc or description.

🏷️ Tag API Update
We are working on multiple API changes in the coming months, and to simplify API response related to tags, we made the change to our API response to show
tagged_items
instead of tags
.Example -
For this request,
GET https://api.staging.getselectstar.com/v1/columns/?tables={GUID}
Previously, the API response would contain -
{.... "tags": [ { "guid": "tg_M5JGjhULEPsayicYn3j7Vn", "type": "category", "name": "Fernanda tag 5", "icon": "tagPink",......
Now, for the same request the response would contain -
{.... "tagged_items": [ { "tag": { "guid": "tg_M5JGjhULEPsayicYn3j7Vn", "type": "category", "name": "Fernanda tag 5", "icon": "tagPink",
This update changes the response for the following API calls -
- columns_list
- columns_read
- columns_partial_update
- tables_list
- tables_read
- tables_partial_update
Have a great day everyone!
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📝 Field Usage for Lineage (beta)
Select Star's new Field Usage feature provides a better understanding of data transformations. It gives you a deeper visibility of how each table / columns were built & transformed.
By pinning a column/field, you can see either on upstream and/or downstream if the field data value is being used As Is, Aggregated, Transformed, or as a Filter.

We hope this feature helps data engineers and analysts do more efficient data pipelines management and troubleshoot issues to maintain high data quality.
Learn more in the doc.
📈 User Analytics
With Select Star's new Analytics feature we provide a platform for the data admins to analyze data on Select Star user activity and data usage. All statistics are based on user activities that are tracked when they perform an action in the Select Star application, and provide valuable insights into user behavior.
Within the
Users
tab, you will be able to see the information about total views, clicks, and edits per user.
In the
Activities
tab, you will be able track which data is being consumed most, the types of data being used, and the frequency of search on each data type, etc.
Additionally, you can export the activity log to a CSV file with all log data for a specific date range.

Learn more in the doc.
🙌 Team page update
We have now added "Team Members" tab on your team page with the team member information including their names, email addresses, and roles. This will help you to easily identify all the team members.

The role refers to a specific function and responsibility in Select Star that is assigned to each team member. To learn about roles visit this page.
Discussion tab provides team members a place collaborate with each other.
Learn more in the doc.
improved
One of Select Star's strengths is strong Looker integration. Now, Looker integration will be more robust with support for LookML Views, Looks, and Looker Folder page.
1. LookML View
LookML Views are now fully supported within the Select Star. You can see out both view-level and field-level lineage.

2. Looker Look
With the new Look page, you can see Looker Look-related metadata on the overview page. Also, you can open this Look with the ‘Open in Looker’ button.

From the left sidebar, you can get a list of Dashboards and Looks as well.

3. Looker Folder Page
You can now see an individual's Looker folder page along with the Shared folder in Select Star. This will help you identify each team member's Looker assets, along with all the shared assets.

Thank you for all feedback you made so far and we are always eager to hear more of your thoughts on the features. Have a great day!
-Select Star Team 🫶
new
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Happy New Year Everyone!
We would love to start the new year with the beloved Select Star Chrome extension updates.
1.
Chrome extension updates (Tableau, Looker, Mode, PowerBI and Sigma)
Now you can see the relevant information on the Select Star Chrome extension while seeing Tableau, Looker, Mode, Sigma, and PowerBI.
So how can we use it? Simple and easy.
- Step 1. Go to the BI tool you use
- Step 2. Click and open the Select Star icon from the Chrome toolbar.
- Step 3. Select Star information on your dashboard will load automatically!

We plan to add support for Google Data (Looker) Studio and Metabase in the near future.
2. Custom Attribute
You can add custom attributes based on asset type in Select Star. A custom attribute is shown in the details section in overview tabs, as a column in the tables, and in the column-level page. Admins can create/edit/delete a custom attribute in the admin page.

Once create it, you are able to see and manage it in table and column page.

This will allow you to add metadata beyond just title & descriptions, such as table refresh rate, data quality metric, and field name alias. Find more information here.
3. Team page in the Sidebar
The team menu in the sidebar helps team navigation and provides quick access to top-level collections of data/resources in your team and organization. Also, you can add your team's GitHub link, Slack Channel info, etc.

4. dbt tag update
Previously, in order to see the dbt tag, you needed to create a separate data source. With this new dbt tag update, you can see imported dbt tags from your connected dbt source directly on your DWH tables.
If you missed our previous dbt tag update, pls take a look at this past change log and our dbt integration docs.
Have a great weekend everyone!
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