Every asset in dScribe can have one or more owners — individual users or teams responsible for maintaining its documentation.
Assigning owners does two key things:
It gives anyone using the asset a clear point of contact for questions.
It activates the suggestions workflow, so all viewers can submit change suggestions to the owners for review.
The result: documentation stays accountable and everyone can contribute while ensuring the owners can always review before changes take effect.
Assigning ownership
On any asset's detail page, click the Owner field in the header. A panel opens where you can search for and select users or teams.
Good to know: When you assign an owner, all subsequent changes to the asset are routed to that owner for approval before they take effect. This applies to documentation, properties, relations, and any other editable field.
You can assign multiple owners. If you assign a team, any member of that team can act on the team's behalf for approvals. The same applies when multiple individual owners are assigned: any one of them can approve.
The suggestions workflow
When an asset has at least one owner, edits made by anyone other than an owner are captured as suggestions instead of being applied immediately. Each suggestion is routed to the owners for review.
Owners themselves don't go through the suggestions workflow on assets they own — their edits are applied directly.
Submitting a suggestion
If you have opened an asset that has owners assigned, a banner will appear on top:
When you change anything and hit Save, the change is captured as a suggestion. The owners will receive your suggestion to review. You can track the status of your suggestions under Home > Suggestions > My suggestions.
Reviewing suggestions (as an owner)
When you own assets with pending suggestions, they surface in two places:
The "Suggestions" overview on your homepage, showing all suggestions waiting for your approval:
A banner on the asset itself that says "You have N suggestion(s) awaiting your approval" with a direct link to review.
For each pending suggestion you can:
Approve — the change is applied to the asset.
Reject — the change is discarded.
The user who suggested the edit will be notified with your decision.
How this fits with permissions and validation
The ownership and suggestions mechanism sits alongside access policies. They serve different purposes and don't override each other.
Access policies define edit permissions, for example whether users can edit validated assets. Being an owner doesn't automatically grant the ability edit — even owners need edit permissions.
Suggestions can be made by anyone, even without edit permissions, but only on assets with ownership assigned.
In other words: suggestions aren't a substitute for edit permissions and they don't unlock actions users are not otherwise allowed to perform.
For more on permissions and access configuration, see Organization.
Owners and access requests
Owners can also be made responsible for approving access requests when a user requests access to an asset they don't currently have permission to view.
See Access request Approval Flows for the full access approval flow.
Where to go next
→ Access request Approval Flows — how owners can play a role in access request workflows
→ Organization — set up the users and teams that can be assigned as owners
Have a question or can't find what you're looking for? Use the chat icon inside the catalog to reach the dScribe support team.