Tracking Changes

K automatically detects and records changes to data items across your connected sources — helping you understand what has changed, when it changed, and who is affected. This underpins two critical workflows: proactive change management (notifying the right people before or as changes happen) and reactive incident investigation (tracing what changed when something breaks).

What K Tracks

K monitors changes at both the structural and usage level across your data estate. This includes:

Change Type	Examples
Schema changes	Columns added, removed, or renamed; data types changed; tables dropped or moved
Content changes	Row counts increasing or dropping significantly; null rates shifting; new values appearing in categorical fields
Ownership changes	Data owner or steward assigned, changed, or removed
Metadata changes	Descriptions, tags, classifications, or glossary links updated
Access changes	Users granted or removed from access to a data asset
Quality changes	Data quality score changes; new DQ issues raised or resolved

The Timeline Tab

Every Data Profile Page in K includes a Timeline tab — a chronological record of all detected changes to that asset.

Use the Timeline to:

Investigate when a change occurred that may have caused a downstream data issue
Confirm when an ownership or classification update was made
Provide an audit trail for data governance and compliance purposes
Understand the change history of an asset before using it in a new project

The Timeline is available to all K users with access to the data asset.

Change Notifications

K automatically notifies users who are directly affected by changes to data assets they interact with. Notifications are delivered via:

K Feed — personalised change updates on the K home page, shown in real time
Daily Briefing — a daily email summary of relevant changes in your data ecosystem
Collaboration Channels — notifications via connected Slack or Microsoft Teams channels (where configured)

Who gets notified?

K uses usage and ownership data to determine who to notify:

Recipient	Trigger
Data owners and stewards	Any change to an asset they own or steward
Recent users	Changes to assets they have recently used
Downstream users	Changes to upstream assets that flow into the data they use (via lineage)
Followers	Any user who has explicitly followed the asset in K

Running an Impact Assessment from a Change

When a change is detected or planned, K makes it easy to scope its downstream impact before or after it occurs.

From the Data Profile Page:

Open the Timeline tab to identify the change
Click … in the page header and select Assess Impact
Configure the assessment direction (typically Downstream) and run

This will return all dependent data assets and users affected by the change. See Impact Assessment for full details.

Change Tracking for Governance Teams

Data governance managers can use the change timeline across the full data estate (not just individual assets) to:

Audit when governance-related metadata was updated (classifications, ownership, policies)
Investigate the root cause of a data incident using chronological change history
Track progress of ongoing governance remediation efforts

🔒 Ecosystem-wide change insights are accessible to users with Data Governance, Data Manager, or Admin roles. The Timeline tab on individual assets is available to all users.

Tips

Scenario	What to do in K
A report broke and you need to know why	Open the data asset's Timeline tab and look for schema or content changes in the relevant timeframe
You're planning a change and need to notify stakeholders	Run an Impact Assessment first, then use the results to identify who to contact
You need to prove when a classification was applied to a sensitive column	Open the column's Timeline — classification changes are recorded with a timestamp and the user who made the change
You want to be alerted to changes to a key dataset	Follow the asset in K so you receive notifications whenever it changes