Please enjoy this sneak peek of an upcoming, major enhancement to the way data inventories are configured and viewed in the Aristotle Metadata Registry!
Note: Card view has since been released as part of Aristotle’s 24th of June release.
What is card view?
When viewed, data inventories can now be toggled between ‘list’ and ‘card’ viewing modes.
‘List view’ refers to the existing viewing mode, with data sets that match inventory parameters appearing in a table, sorted by the fields chosen when editing the data inventory.
‘Card view’ refers to a new viewing mode, with data sets that match inventory parameters appearing as a collection of ‘cards’ — one for each item. Each card contains the relevant item’s inventory-aligned fields, and can be further refined using new filter and ‘refinement field’ functions! More on those soon…
The procedure for creating, editing or viewing a data inventory remains the same; as an Administrator, start by deciding whether you want to create an inventory that is specific to a chosen Stewardship Organisation, or one that is registry-wide.
Steward-Organisation-specific inventories will only contain data sets that belong workgroups of that Stewardship Organisation, whereas registry-wide inventories will contain all applicable data sets from the registry.
To create or edit a Stewardship Organisation’s data inventory, navigate to that Stewardship Organisation’s settings tab, and select ‘Data Inventory Configuration’. From there you can either create a new inventory, or select an existing one and edit it as required.
To create or edit a registry-wide inventory, select ‘Aristotle Cloud Dashboard’ from your dashboard side panel, then ‘Data Inventory Configuration’. Again, you can either create a new inventory or select and edit an existing one from the resulting page.
Regardless of whether you are creating a new data inventory or editing an existing one, you’ll find some new features in the editor once you have populated or reviewed and updated the ‘Inventory View Name’, ‘Description’ and ‘All Filters’ fields, all of which retain their existing functionality.
The first new feature you’ll find is the ability to select a ‘Default View Option’. This will adjust which viewing mode will be active by default when users navigate to the inventory view of this data inventory.
As this is adjusted, the interface of the editor itself will change to be more contextual depending on the view option selected as default! This gives editors better visibility of how the data inventory might appear before saving their changes.
Once you have chosen a default viewing mode, you can fill out the right-side ‘Editable card’ field (if you have chosen card view as your default), or ‘Inventory View’ field (if you have chosen list view as your default) with the metadata item parameters contained within the left-side field(s) by dragging and dropping as normal.
Notes:
- The only section of card view’s ‘Editable card’ field that can contain more than one parameter is the bottommost ‘Custom and Additional Fields’ section, which can contain an unlimited number of parameters
- Elements added to the right-side field(s) in one view will also be added to the right-side field(s) of the other view. Both views are edited synchronously.
When card view is selected as the default view option, a new ‘Current Refinement Field’ dropdown will appear at the bottom of the editor.
Once you’ve saved/created your inventory, the item field selected from this dropdown will dictate the format of the refinement field card, a list reflective of the items therein, when the inventory is viewed in card view.
In the example below, a list of all inventory items’ IDs are displayed in the refinement field card, as ‘ID’ was chosen as the ‘Current Refinement Field’ during editing.
Each entry in the refinement field card can then be selected to automatically filter the inventory by the selected value!
If deeper filtering is required, it can be achieved via the new filter bar! From here, you can select any field that exists within your inventory, or your selected refinement field, and manually enter the value of that field that you wish to locate.
Last but not least; if you haven’t spotted it already, you can toggle between the new card view and the existing list view using the buttons on the right-hand side of the inventory view page.
Please enjoy the following video demonstrating how to use the new card view:
How does the card view benefit users?
The card view was added to data inventories as a means to make them more adjustable on an inventory-by-inventory basis, as well as by doing away with any discouragement that may have come from a lack of ‘searchability’ within an inventory via the new filter functionality.
At its most basic level, card view offers a new way to view data inventories that are too large to be easily navigated as a long table in list view, laying it out instead in a user friendly, easily-to-navigate format.
Cards can additionally be filtered, refined by your chosen refinement field and selected to take you straight to the item page of the relevant data set, making for a much more logical workflow for users who come to a data inventory to find and interact with its data sets rather than simply review their data!
Or, for those users who do use data inventories simply to review or retrieve the fields of the data sets therein, this is why we have made the card view a toggle rather than a forced enhancement. The existing list view retains full functionality, and remains as clean-cut, downloadable and auditable as ever.
Your feedback matters
Your feedback is invaluable as we continue to innovate and improve the Aristotle Metadata Registry. We’ve designed this feature with your metadata management needs in mind, and we want to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with suggestions, ideas, or questions.
Note: The features outlined in feature previews are not yet finalised; any features described may differ upon final release.