Summary

This blog describes the steps a customer should go through once they’ve decided to move from a Free Trial into Production, including both recommended steps and some optional steps. This blog includes references to a checklist, worksheets, and key documentation that is helpful to configuration and setup.

Full Post

So you’ve completed your Zepl Free Trial, and you want to move into Production. Now what?

We’ve made it easy for you to move from Trial mode into Production mode on Zepl.

After you’ve entered a credit card (for on-demand usage) or signed an enterprise contract (for prepaid discounted usage), there are only a few decisions to make and settings to set so you can be Production-ready in minutes.

Decisions

First, confirm the name you’ve entered for your Organization. The Organization name shows up on reports and screens and you can verify and edit the name in Settings>>Organization. You can also add an image or logo to personalize the site for your users.

Second, decide if you will authenticate your users through your SSO provider (i.e., Okta, OpenID, etc.) or continue using Zepl’s Username/Password for authentication. If you want to authenticate user login via SSO, then follow the SSO Configuration steps described here. If you want to continue using Zepl’s Username/Password, then no changes are required.

Third, decide if you want to configure different Permissions and Security profiles for your users within your Zepl account. Zepl is pre-loaded with 4 Security Profiles (Account Owner, Security Administrator, Billing Administrator and Infrastructure Administrator). You can read more about the default permissions here. The Security Administrator, Billing Administrator and Infrastructure Administrator profiles can be tailored to your specific preferences and/or you can create as many new profiles you would like. Then, assign each of your users to one or many of those profiles to establish their permissions. Note, if you assign multiple Security Profiles to a User, the Permissions are additive meaning the User will have the superset of permissions of each individual policy.

 

 

Now you are ready to start inviting more Users into Zepl.

Optional Settings

You can also set up the following for enhanced controls and ease of use.

Teams

You can create Teams, which are groups of Users. A User can be on no Teams or on multiple Teams. Teams allow you to grant group permissions to individual Notebooks, to all Notebooks in a Space (described below), and to Resources (which are infrastructure assets described below).

Spaces

You can define Spaces which are logical groupings of Notebooks. You can design your Spaces any way you choose including by Project, by Department, or by Region. Set these up to group your Notebooks for easier collaboration and to help find the work you are looking for. Individual Members or entire Teams can be granted permissions to a Space.

Data Sources

You can pre-configure Data Sources to require individual credentials per user or through a Service Account set up for the Data Source. In this step you will define the Data Source, define the public endpoint, and enter your personal login credentials. Once a Data Source is set up, anyone can reference the Data Source but they will have to enter their own login credentials (unless using a Service Account). You can add a new Data Source by clicking the New button on the left hand menu and select New Data Source.

 

Here is a document describing the steps to create a Data Source for individual credentials or using a Service Account.

If you want to set up SSO for accessing your Snowflake Data Source, you can find instructions here.  You can also build custom libraries of modules and versions for use by your users using our Custom Images feature.

Job Schedules

You can pre-build Job Schedules to let you run Notebooks at predefined schedules. You can create a Job Schedule when you are in the edit mode of a Notebook by clicking Set Schedule in the drop down menu of additional Notebook options (3 dots in the upper right hand corner).

Job Schedules can be viewed by selecting Monitor>Scheduled Jobs on the left hand navigation menu. To learn more about Job Schedules, click here.

Code Snippets

You can easily add and retrieve commonly used code blocks during initial setup or anytime you are editing your Notebooks. Code Snippets can be easily shared with your teammates and are managed (added, retrieved and edited) by clicking the Code Snippet icon ( <->) on the right hand navigation menu when you are in editing mode of your Notebook.

 

 

Checklist

We’ve documented all of these steps in a simple to use checklist which you can download here. The checklist also includes a couple of worksheets (separate tabs in the workbook) to help you with some of the data gathering such as setting up custom Permission Policies and assigning Member/Users to Policies and Teams.

Reach out to us at support@zepl.com if you need help or want to share your use case with us.