You just got invited to collaborate on Y42? We are excited to have you on board! Y42 allows you and your team to align on everything data-related, no matter if you're an executive, data engineer, or part of the marketing team.
Y42 is not "yet another data tool". Y42 means that all your company's data is in one place, ready to be analyzed by everyone. This allows your team to get insights at the speed of thought. Y42 enables not only the technology-savvy people to dive deep into data, but empowers everyone in your organization.
Logging in
Once you've received your mail invitation, it's time to set up a password for your account. Just click the link in the invitation mail to do so. Then you can log into Y42 from any device.
Once you're logged into Y42, you will see a welcome screen. You can be part of multiple organizations. Click on the one you want to proceed with.
Your Organization on Y42
After clicking on your organization, you will automatically be redirected to the main navigation. The main navigation is the tab on the left of your screen which will always be present in the Y42 platform.
The main navigation contains your organization's name and the functions Integrate, Model, Visualize, Activate, as well as your Admin settings.
The Integrate Tab brings together in Y42' platform, integrations from all different sources in one place, be them from Facebook, Excel, Shopify, Stripe, Google Analytics or from an ever-expanding list of other sources. You can easily add new Integrations, by clicking on the Add... button on the top-right corner of your window.
The Model Tab is "where the magic happens". Here you can take all the data you have uploaded in Y42' platform and modify them as your wish. Join them with other data sources, extract from them your desired information or fully transform them.
In the Visualize tab, you will find your organization's dashboards. A dashboard is an interactive visualization of the analyses you created. These analyses can be common charts such as pie or bar charts or more advanced statistical methods such as standardized regressions or driver analyses. All these are easily done and created with just a few clicks and allow you to get insights in just a few seconds. You can create a new dashboard by clicking Add... in the top right corner.
The Activate tab allows you to feedback your data into your applications or files. That way, you can easily automate data flows.
If you're the owner of an organization, you will also be able to access the Admin tab through the main navigation. An owner is one of three roles in an organization besides a Manager and a Member. An Owner that has permission to all resources and organization settings. A manager has access to all resources but no organization settings. Finally, a member needs assigned permissions to access resources.
Data Warehousing by Y42
Y42 works in a way that removes the burden of DWH housekeeping from the user. Y42 automatically creates a dataset inside your Big Query project with all the views generated from the work done inside your Y42 org. Our internal mechanism deletes these views after 14 days, so you don't have to worry about hoarding unused views.
Y42 generates two datasets: the main dataset and the views dataset. All the data in the main dataset are tables, and all the data in the _view_ dataset are views (to understand more about views visit here).
The main dataset has hashed naming which is used internally by Y42 to then generate views for the user. Note that editing this dataset could break models and workflows inside the product. Here, the table-names are also hashed since this is only to be used by our application. Y42 creates and deletes tables In this dataset all the time since most data updates actually result in a new table. This is why one will also find many more tables than in the actual application since old table versions are still stored for 14 days.
Meanwhile, The view dataset is specifically created to be readable by the user. Here the tables are following the naming of {datasourcename}_{productname}_timestamp_tablecreation. The timestamp is from the first time this table is created and does not change when new data is updated. This is because our application makes sure to always update the reference within the view when the underlying table switches. The views dataset also includes tables from Big Query integrations, as long as the dataset which you are integrating is from the same google cloud project and within the same region as the one you used to create your Y42 organization. In that case you don't have to import anything since each new run will always pick the current data. If it is in different regions, then the tables can be “updated” through orchestration runs.
When you want to connect another BI Software to Y42 we recommend to use one of two strategies:
Directly connect to the view dataset that we generate for you if you want to get up and running quickly. Note: if you delete the output node or the table, this reference will be lost.
Use our BigQuery automation to export into a new BigQuery dataset if you want to be in control over your dataset structure and naming. This is a more stable solution.
Is it possible to migrate my Y42 dataset to a different region?
Yes, it is possible to migrate datasets to a different region. If moving the Y42 datasets, then a little manual work will be required from our side and yours. We will, of course, help with that as well!
Your data lineage
Y42 is a layer on top of your data warehouse (Google BigQuery) that visualizes your data flows and transformations. To access your data lineage, click the DL button over the Help button.
Getting help
Wherever you are in the Y42 platform, you will always be able to access the help widget. Just click on
to open it. Depending on where you are in the Y42 platform, it will automatically suggest relevant videos and articles to you. If you are looking for something specific, just type it into the search bar. You can also report a bug or request a feature. Don't hesitate to contact us!
What's Next?
We hope you enjoy exploring our platform! You can learn about Importing a New Data Source to get your data into the Y42 platform – it only takes a few clicks and can be done without any technical knowledge! If your organization already has imported a few data sources, you can jump right into Creating a new Transformation or Creating a new Visualization.
