Review Default CDE Standards¶
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A CDE standard is a measurable set of requirements that governs a Critical Data Element (CDE). Standards define expectations for metadata completeness, quality thresholds, ownership, and other governance attributes. The CDE Manager evaluates each CDE against its assigned standards and reports on compliance.
You start managing critical data by reviewing the default CDE standards and defining any additional standards required to support your governance objectives. Standards are created and maintained in the Standards section of the CDE Manager.
When CDE Manager is enabled, the application includes four built-in standards:
Approval Rules (type: Governance Standard)
Baseline Metadata (type: Template Baseline)
Risk Assessment Framework (type: Governance Standard)
Curation Score Standard (type: Governance Standard)
The default standards appear automatically in the Standards section of CDE Manager. The initial version of the standards appears as owned by the system user CDE Admin, which is not a user role and cannot be assigned to users. This designation simply indicates that the standard was created by the system and is in its default revision.
Further in this topic:
Understanding the Default CDE Standards¶
CDE Manager provides four default, system-created CDE standards. These standards give you a starting point for governing CDEs and can be adapted to meet your organization’s needs.
Before creating CDE registry entries, review each default standard carefully. You can edit specific elements within the default standards to align them with your organization’s processes. See Edit Default CDE Standards for details on which elements of a default standard can be modified and how to make those changes. Adjust, refine, or extend them to ensure they accurately reflect your governance requirements.
Approval Rules¶
The Approval Rules standard allows administrators to configure the globally defined approvers used throughout the CDE Manager. This standard specifies who is authorized to approve the publication of CDE standards and CDE registry entries and who must participate in every CDE certification workflow.
Approval Rules include two categories of approvers:
Global Standards Approvers: Users or groups authorized to review and publish CDE standards.
Global CDE Approvers: Users or groups who must be included in every CDE certification process.
As a Catalog Admin responsible for defining governance processes, you assign the appropriate users and groups to these approver categories. These assignments determine who can review and approve standards and who participates in certification activities across all CDEs.
Baseline Metadata¶
The Baseline Metadata standard defines the minimum set of metadata required for every CDE. It is intended to ensure that each CDE contains the foundational information needed for governance.
Default baseline fields include:
Name
Description
Owner
Stewards
Approver
Contributors
Domain
Source
Note
These fields are not the same as catalog fields created through Customize Catalog. Baseline fields exist only within CDE Manager on catalog pages of CDEs and are used by AI-assisted features in the application.
Risk Assessment Framework¶
The Risk Assessment Framework standard provides a structured approach to evaluating whether a data element should be considered critical. It helps rationalize the number of CDEs by distinguishing elements with higher risk or impact from those that require less oversight. Without such rationalization, organizations may risk designating too many elements as critical, making effective governance unmanageable.
This standard includes three risk levels, from 1 (low) to 3 (high), along with criteria for assigning each level.
Curation Score Standard¶
The Curation Score Standard defines curation score requirements for data assets associated with a CDE. It is applied to any data asset mapped to a CDE in the registry.
The default Curation standard includes three requirements:
Database Column Curation Score: Criteria for curated database columns associated with CDEs
BI Datasource Column Curation Score: Criteria for curated BI datasource columns associated with CDEs
BI Report Column Curation Score: Criteria for curated BI report columns associated with CDEs
Edit Default CDE Standards¶
You can edit specific parts of each default standard (Approval Rules, Baseline Metadata, Risk Assessment Framework, Curation Score Standard) to align them with your organization’s governance practices.
Editing a standard follows a three-step versioning workflow. You cannot edit and save a standard directly; every change must move through the following states:
Draft: You start by editing the first system-created version. Making changes to this version creates a new draft version when you save. You become the Owner of this draft version. Once your changes are complete, you move the draft to the next review stage.
In Review: The draft is reviewed by the standard Approver defined within the Approval Rules standard. The owner can approve the standard version, which moves it to the Published state or returns it to the Draft state.
Published: The updated version becomes active. The previous version is automatically deprecated and assigned the Deprecated state.
Each default standard includes requirements specific to its purpose and scope, and you can edit these requirements as needed. We recommend beginning with the Approval Rules standard, as it defines who is authorized to approve changes to all standards. Once configured, your other standards will use these assigned approvers as they progress through the lifecycle.
Edit the Approval Rules Standard¶
The Approval Rules standard allows administrators to configure the globally defined approvers used throughout the CDE Manager. You can edit the Global Standards Approvers and Global CDE Approvers: users or groups who must be included in every Standard review and CDE certification process.
To edit the Standard Approvers standard:
Open the Approval Rules standard from the Standards table.
Note
Look at the stepper at the top of the page, as it displays the lifecycle stage of the current version.
Expand each Derived Requirement panel: Global Standards Approvers and Global CDE Approvers.
For each derived requirement, select users and groups.
Click Save in the top-right corner to save the changes. This creates a draft of the new version of this standard. You become the Owner of this version. The stepper at the top of the page displays the lifecycle stage of the current standard version.
Click Submit for Review under the Draft step in the stepper on top of the standard’s editor page to move the updated draft into the In Review state.
As the editor of the first system-owned version, you can review and publish your own changes. Under In Review, click Review.
The Review dialog opens with two options: Approve or Reject:
If you select Approve, the draft is promoted to the Published state. The previous version is automatically deprecated and assigned the Deprecated status. The updated standard becomes active and is now used when creating or evaluating CDEs.
If you select Reject, the draft returns to the Draft state. The owner can revise the content and resubmit it for review once the necessary updates are made.
To return to the list of CDE standards, click Standards in the breadcrumbs under the standard’s title at the top of the page.
Edit the Baseline Metadata Standard¶
In the default Baseline Metadata standard, you can edit the names of the baseline fields. You cannot change the number of fields or the allowed values. Only their display names can be customized.
To edit the Baseline standard:
Open the Baseline Metadata standard from the Standards table.
Note
Look at the stepper at the top of the page, as it displays the lifecycle stage of the current version.
Expand the Baseline panel. Hover over the field you want to rename. The edit (pencil) icon appears next to the field name.
Click the edit icon to make the field name editable. Enter the new name. Click outside the field to exit edit mode.
Click Save in the top-right corner to save the changes. This creates a draft of the new version of this standard. You become the Owner of this version. The stepper at the top of the page displays the lifecycle stage of the current standard version.
Click Submit for Review under the Draft step in the stepper on top of the standard’s editor page to move the updated draft into the In Review state.
If you are designated as an approver in the Approval Rules standard, you can review and publish your own changes. Under In Review, click Review. If not, see Review CDE Standard Drafts. The designated approvers will review and approve or reject your draft.
The Review dialog opens with two options: Approve or Reject:
If you select Approve, the draft is promoted to the Published state. The previous version is automatically deprecated and assigned the Deprecated status. The updated standard becomes active and is now used when creating or evaluating CDEs.
If you select Reject, the draft returns to the Draft state. The owner can revise the content and resubmit it for review once the necessary updates are made.
To return to the list of CDE standards, click Standards in the breadcrumbs under the standard’s title at the top of the page.
Edit the Risk Assessment Framework Standard¶
In the Risk Assessment Framework standard, you can edit the labels for the risk levels and the criteria associated with each level. The risk labels are associated with CDEs when you create them later in the Registry.
To edit the Risk standard:
Open the Risk Assessment Framework standard from the Standards table.
Note
Look at the stepper at the top of the page, as it displays the lifecycle stage of the current version.
Expand the Derived Requirements panel.
To edit a risk label:
Hover over the label (default values are Low, Medium, and High).
Click the edit (pencil) icon that appears on hover-over.
Edit the label to match your organization’s terminology.
Click outside the field to exit edit mode.
To edit the criteria for a risk level:
Hover over the criteria block.
Click the edit (pencil) icon that appears on the right. The block becomes editable.
Update the criteria text and click the green checkmark to save the change.
Click Save in the top-right corner to save the changes. This creates a draft of the new version of this standard. You become the Owner of this version. The stepper at the top of the page displays the lifecycle stage of the current standard version.
Click Submit for Review under the Draft step in the stepper on top of the standard’s editor page to move the updated draft into the In Review state.
If you are designated as an approver in the Approval Rules standard, you can review and publish your own changes. Under In Review, click Review. If not, see Review CDE Standard Drafts. The designated approvers will review and approve or reject your draft.
The Review dialog opens with two options: Approve or Reject:
If you select Approve, the draft is promoted to the Published state. The previous version is automatically deprecated and assigned the Deprecated status. The updated standard becomes active and is now used when creating or evaluating CDEs.
If you select Reject, the draft returns to the Draft state. The owner can revise the content and resubmit it for review once the necessary updates are made.
To return to the list of CDE standards, click Standards in the breadcrumbs under the standard’s title at the top of the page.
Edit the Curation Score Standard¶
The Curation Score standard specifies the curation score requirements for data assets linked to a CDE. The curation score indicates the extent to which required catalog fields have been populated on the asset’s catalog page. You can edit the Selected Fields used in each derived requirement in this standard.
To edit the Curation standard:
Open the Curation standard from the Standards table.
Note
Look at the stepper at the top of the page, as it displays the lifecycle stage of the current version.
Expand each Derived Requirement panel (Database Column Curation Score, BI Datasource Column Curation Score, BI Report Column Curation Score).
For each derived requirement, select the Select Fields radio button, then select the catalog fields to include in the calculation of the curation score from the list of fields. These fields define which catalog attributes are included in curation scoring. Select the fields your governance program designates as required curation information for a critical data element.
Note
The fields available for selection in this standard are the catalog fields configured on the custom templates for the relevant object types.
Click Save in the top-right corner to save the changes. This creates a draft of the new version of this standard. You become the Owner of this version. The stepper at the top of the page displays the lifecycle stage of the current standard version.
Click Submit for Review under the Draft step in the stepper on top of the standard’s editor page to move the updated draft into the In Review state.
If you are designated as an approver in the Approval Rules standard, you can review and publish your own changes. Under In Review, click Review. If not, see Review CDE Standard Drafts. The designated approvers will review and approve or reject your draft.
The Review dialog opens with two options: Approve or Reject:
If you select Approve, the draft is promoted to the Published state. The previous version is automatically deprecated and assigned the Deprecated status. The updated standard becomes active and is now used when creating or evaluating CDEs.
If you select Reject, the draft returns to the Draft state. The owner can revise the content and resubmit it for review once the necessary updates are made.
To return to the list of CDE standards, click Standards in the breadcrumbs under the standard’s title at the top of the page.
Read next: Manage CDE Standards