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Followers

Stay informed about changes to data assets you care about

Overview

The Followers feature allows users to "follow" data assets and receive notifications when those assets change. Following is a lightweight way to stay informed about specific tables, dashboards, pipelines, or other data assets without being the owner.

Think of it like following a topic on social media - you get updates about things you care about without having to actively check for changes.

What is Following?

Following is a many-to-many relationship between users and data assets. Any user can follow any data asset, and any data asset can have multiple followers.

graph LR
    U1[User: Alice] -.->|follows| T1[Table: customers]
    U2[User: Bob] -.->|follows| T1
    U3[User: Carol] -.->|follows| T1

    U1 -.->|follows| T2[Table: orders]
    U1 -.->|follows| D1[Dashboard: Sales]

    style U1 fill:#059669,stroke:#047857,color:#fff
    style U2 fill:#059669,stroke:#047857,color:#fff
    style U3 fill:#059669,stroke:#047857,color:#fff
    style T1 fill:#3B82F6,stroke:#2563EB,color:#fff
    style T2 fill:#3B82F6,stroke:#2563EB,color:#fff
    style D1 fill:#8B5CF6,stroke:#7C3AED,color:#fff

Following vs Ownership

Aspect Owner Follower
Relationship 1 owner (user or team) Many followers
Responsibility Accountable for the asset Interested in the asset
Permissions May have special edit rights Standard view permissions
Notifications All changes All changes
Assignment Manually assigned or inherited User self-selects
Visibility Shown prominently in UI Listed in followers section
Use Case Data stewardship Staying informed

Key Distinction: Ownership implies responsibility and accountability, while following indicates interest and awareness.

Why Follow Data Assets?

1. Stay Informed About Dependencies

If your application depends on a table, follow it to be notified when the schema changes or if it's deprecated.

Example: A data scientist follows the customer_features table that powers their ML model, so they're alerted to any schema changes that might break their pipeline.

2. Monitor Data Quality

Follow tables with critical data to receive alerts about quality test failures or data freshness issues.

Example: An analyst follows the daily_revenue table to be notified if data quality tests fail or if the data becomes stale.

3. Track Important Metrics

Follow dashboards or reports that track key business metrics to be notified of updates or changes.

Example: A product manager follows the "User Growth Dashboard" to stay informed about any changes to metric definitions.

4. Collaborate on Data Assets

Follow assets you're working on with others to stay in sync with changes and discussions.

Example: A data engineer follows a pipeline they're helping to debug, even though they don't own it.

5. Audit Compliance Requirements

Follow assets with compliance requirements to be notified of any changes that might affect regulatory compliance.

Example: A compliance officer follows all tables tagged with PII to monitor access and changes.

What Notifications Do Followers Receive?

Followers are notified about:

Metadata Changes

  • Description updates
  • Schema changes (new columns, column type changes)
  • Tag additions or removals
  • Ownership changes
  • Display name changes

Quality & Reliability

  • Data quality test failures
  • Data freshness issues
  • Profile anomalies (unusual null rates, distribution changes)
  • SLA violations

Governance Changes

  • Classification or tier changes
  • Domain reassignments
  • Policy violations
  • Deprecation notices

Structural Changes

  • Asset soft deletion
  • Asset restoration
  • Major version changes

Activity & Usage

  • Major query pattern changes (configurable)
  • Significant usage drops (configurable)

Notification Preferences

Users can configure which types of changes trigger notifications in their user preferences. For example, you might want immediate alerts for schema changes but only daily summaries of description updates.

How to Follow Data Assets

Via Web UI

  1. Navigate to any data asset (table, dashboard, pipeline, etc.)
  2. Click the "Follow" button (usually a star or bell icon)
  3. You're now following that asset and will receive notifications

Via API

Add yourself as a follower:

PUT /v1/tables/{id}/followers/{userId}

Add another user as a follower (requires permissions):

PUT /v1/tables/{id}/followers/{otherUserId}

Via Bulk Operations

Follow multiple assets at once:

PUT /v1/users/{userId}/follows/bulk
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "entities": [
    {"id": "table-uuid-1", "type": "table"},
    {"id": "dashboard-uuid-2", "type": "dashboard"},
    {"id": "pipeline-uuid-3", "type": "pipeline"}
  ]
}

How to Unfollow Data Assets

Via Web UI

  1. Navigate to the data asset
  2. Click the "Following" button (it should be highlighted/active)
  3. You're no longer following that asset

Via API

Remove yourself as a follower:

DELETE /v1/tables/{id}/followers/{userId}

Managing Followers

View All Followers of an Asset

GET /v1/tables/{id}/followers

Response: 

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "user-uuid-1",
      "type": "user",
      "name": "alice.smith",
      "displayName": "Alice Smith"
    },
    {
      "id": "user-uuid-2",
      "type": "user",
      "name": "bob.jones",
      "displayName": "Bob Jones"
    }
  ]
}

View All Assets a User Follows

GET /v1/users/{userId}/follows?fields=tables,dashboards,pipelines

Response: 

{
  "tables": [
    {"id": "...", "fullyQualifiedName": "postgres_prod.ecommerce.public.customers"},
    {"id": "...", "fullyQualifiedName": "postgres_prod.ecommerce.public.orders"}
  ],
  "dashboards": [
    {"id": "...", "fullyQualifiedName": "superset.sales_dashboard"}
  ],
  "pipelines": [
    {"id": "...", "fullyQualifiedName": "airflow.customer_etl"}
  ]
}

Use Cases & Patterns

Pattern 1: Dependency Tracking

Scenario: Your data pipeline depends on 5 upstream tables.

Action: Follow all 5 tables to be notified of: - Schema changes that might break your pipeline - Data quality issues in source data - Deprecation notices

Pattern 2: Stakeholder Awareness

Scenario: You're a product manager who needs to stay informed about data definitions but doesn't own the data.

Action: Follow all tables and dashboards related to your product area to receive updates about: - Metric definition changes - New data availability - Dashboard updates

Pattern 3: Data Quality Monitoring

Scenario: You're responsible for ensuring data quality for critical business metrics.

Action: Follow all tables involved in calculating those metrics to be alerted to: - Test failures - Anomalies in data profiles - Freshness issues

Pattern 4: Collaborative Projects

Scenario: A cross-functional team is working on a data migration project.

Action: All team members follow the tables being migrated to stay informed about: - Migration progress - Schema changes - Validation results

Pattern 5: Compliance Monitoring

Scenario: You need to track changes to all PII-containing tables for compliance.

Action: Follow all tables tagged with PII to monitor: - Access changes - Schema modifications - Policy updates

Best Practices

1. Follow Strategically

Don't follow everything - focus on assets that are: - Critical to your work - Dependencies of your applications - Subject to frequent changes - Under active development

2. Configure Notification Preferences

Adjust notification settings to avoid alert fatigue: - Immediate alerts for critical changes (schema, quality) - Daily digests for minor updates (descriptions, tags) - Weekly summaries for usage statistics

3. Review Your Following List Regularly

Periodically review and unfollow assets that are no longer relevant to avoid notification overload.

4. Use Following for Onboarding

New team members should follow key data assets to learn what changes and why.

5. Combine with Search Subscriptions

Follow individual assets, but also set up search subscriptions for patterns: - All tables in a specific domain - All dashboards with specific tags - All pipelines in a particular service

6. Team Patterns

Establish team conventions: - Data engineers follow all production tables they deploy - Analysts follow source tables for their reports - Product managers follow dashboards tracking their KPIs

Technical Details

Storage

Followers are stored as many-to-many relationships in the metadata database:

{
  "entityType": "table",
  "entityId": "table-uuid",
  "followers": [
    {
      "id": "user-uuid-1",
      "type": "user",
      "name": "alice.smith"
    },
    {
      "id": "user-uuid-2",
      "type": "user",
      "name": "bob.jones"
    }
  ]
}

Event Stream

When a user follows/unfollows an asset, a change event is generated:

{
  "eventType": "entityUpdated",
  "entityType": "table",
  "entityId": "table-uuid",
  "changeDescription": {
    "fieldsAdded": [
      {
        "name": "followers",
        "newValue": [{"id": "user-uuid", "type": "user"}]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Notification Delivery

Notifications to followers are delivered via: 1. In-app notifications: Bell icon in the UI 2. Email: Configurable digest or immediate 3. Slack/Teams: Via webhook integrations 4. Custom webhooks: For integration with other systems

Integration with Other Features

Webhooks

Configure webhooks to trigger on changes to followed assets:

{
  "name": "Follower Notifications",
  "eventFilters": ["entityUpdated", "entityDeleted"],
  "batchSize": 10,
  "endpoint": "https://your-system.com/notifications",
  "condition": "user.follows(entity)"
}

Activity Feeds

Followed assets appear in your personalized activity feed, showing recent changes and discussions.

Recommendations

The system uses your following patterns to recommend: - Similar assets you might want to follow - Related assets in the same domain - Assets frequently followed together

Programmatic Usage

Follow Assets Matching a Pattern

from openmetadata.client import OpenMetadata

client = OpenMetadata(...)
user_id = "my-user-uuid"

# Follow all tables in production with PII
tables = client.list_tables(
    database="postgres_prod",
    tags=["PII.Sensitive"]
)

for table in tables:
    client.add_follower(
        entity_type="table",
        entity_id=table.id,
        follower_id=user_id
    )

Get Notification Summary

# Get all changes to followed assets in the last 24 hours
changes = client.get_follower_activity(
    user_id=user_id,
    since=datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1),
    event_types=["entityUpdated", "testCaseFailure"]
)

for change in changes:
    print(f"{change.entity_name}: {change.change_type}")

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between following and owning? A: Ownership indicates responsibility and accountability, while following indicates interest. Owners are typically assigned, followers self-select.

Q: Can I follow assets I don't have permission to view? A: No, you can only follow assets you have at least read permission for.

Q: How many assets can I follow? A: There's no hard limit, but we recommend following fewer than 100 assets to avoid notification overload.

Q: Can I automatically follow all assets in a domain? A: Not directly, but you can use the API to bulk follow assets or set up a subscription to a domain search query.

Q: Do I get notified about every single change? A: You can configure notification preferences to control which types of changes trigger notifications and how they're delivered (immediate, digest, etc.).

Q: Can teams follow assets? A: No, following is a personal feature. For team-level awareness, use ownership or create shared alerts.

Q: How do I stop getting notifications? A: Either unfollow the asset or adjust your notification preferences to reduce frequency or filter event types.

Next Steps