Add contract impact analysis in GitHub Private Preview

Identify how modifications to data contracts might impact downstream processes and data quality using the Atlan GitHub Action. This action places impact analysis directly into your pull request, allowing you to view potential downstream impacts before merging changes.

Prerequisites

1. Before running the action, you need to create an Atlan API token or configure an OAuth client.
2. You also need to assign a persona to the API token and add a metadata policy that provides the requisite permissions on assets for the Atlan action to work. For example, you can add the following permissions:
   • Asset, such as a table - Read only
   • Any downstream connections, such as Microsoft Power BI - Read only
3. You need to configure the default GITHUB_TOKEN permissions. Grant Read and write permissions to the GITHUB_TOKEN in your repository to enable the atlan-action to seamlessly add or update comments on pull requests. Refer to GitHub documentation to learn more.

Configure the action

To set up the Atlan action in GitHub:

1. Create repository secrets in your repository:
   • ATLAN_INSTANCE_URL with the URL of your Atlan instance.
   • ATLAN_API_TOKEN with the value of the API token.
2. Add the GitHub Action to your workflow:

   1. Create a workflow file in your repository - .github/workflows/atlan-action.yml.

   2. Add the following code to your workflow file:

      name: Atlan action
      
      on:
        pull_request:
          types: [opened, edited, synchronize, reopened, closed]
      
      jobs:
        get-downstream-impact:
          name: Get Downstream Assets
          runs-on: ubuntu-latest
          steps:
            - name: Checkout
              uses: actions/checkout@v4
                
            - name: Run Action
              uses: atlanhq/atlan-action@v1
              with:
                GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
                ATLAN_INSTANCE_URL: ${{secrets.ATLAN_INSTANCE_URL}}
                ATLAN_API_TOKEN: ${{secrets.ATLAN_API_TOKEN}}
                ATLAN_CONFIG: .atlan/config.yaml

Test the action

After you've completed the configuration earlier, create a pull request with a changed Atlan data contract file to test the action. You can see the Atlan GitHub action running and then adding comments in your pull request:

• The GitHub workflow adds and updates a single comment for every file change.
• The impacted assets in the comment are displayed in a collapsible section and grouped by source and asset type.
• The comment includes some metadata for your impacted assets - such as descriptions, owners, and linked glossary terms.
• View impacted assets directly in Atlan.

Inputs

Name	Description	Required
GITHUB_TOKEN	For writing comments on PRs to print downstream assets	true
ATLAN_INSTANCE_URL	For making API requests to the user's tenant	true
ATLAN_API_TOKEN	For authenticating API requests to the user's tenant	true
ATLAN_CONFIG	For impact analysis of Atlan data contracts, if included in a GitHub PR	true