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Entity Overlays

Overview​

Entity overlays is a process originally created to handle use cases of updating metadata of entities ingested into the Software Catalog directly from external sources instead of through manual entity creation, such as those in the data registry, but can be applied to any entity in the Catalog. Applying an overlay does not change the metadata at the source or in the Catalog but decorates the entity in an reversible manner for simpler entity management through Portal's UI.

Overlays currently supports adding labels, annotations, and tags

Use Cases​

Any scenario where there is a need or want for different metadata to exist in Portal than the original source of the entity, including but not limited to:

  • Decorating an entity with extra metadata only needed in the Software Catalog and not the source
  • Adding tags to make an entity more easily searchable in the Catalog
  • Defining a relationship between entities just in Portal with labels
  • Add annotations that are required for other plugins to show on the entity

How To​

Currently, the feature flag enableEntityOverlays needs to be configured to use entity overlays. Reach out to your Portal admins for support on doing this.

On a given entity page needing an update, go to the ellipses menu in the top right corner.

Overlay location

The option Edit entity overlay will open the overlays form.

Overlay menu

Here one can update any and all supported metadata. For tags, click Add after each tag addition.

Overlay empty form

When all overlays are added, hit Save and a confirmation will pop up.

Overlay filled form

The updating of the entity is a background process that usually happens quickly but can take up to a couple of minutes and requires a page refresh to display.

To remove an overlay, you can remove the metadata from the form - saving this update will remove in the same timeframe as adding.