Skip to main content

Operations runbook

Strong Marketplace providers operate like product teams: they plan for change, validate continuously, invest in enablement, use analytics to guide iteration, and treat governance as a long-term discipline. This runbook outlines core operational practices to sustain trust, reliability, and adoption.

Establish a change management process​

Every shared asset evolves. Define a lightweight but dependable process for managing:

  • Schema changes (additive vs. breaking)
  • Table or view refresh logic
  • Model version updates

Communicate planned changes to your consumers in advance, especially when structural updates could affect downstream workloads.

Perform regular health checks​

Schedule periodic reviews to confirm that shares, recipients, and notebooks are still working as intended. These should include:

  • Verifying that shares reference the correct Delta tables, views, volumes, or models
  • Ensuring recipient entitlements still align with business and contractual intent
  • Validating Change Data Feed (CDF), refresh cadence, and data freshness where applicable
  • Confirming MCP endpoints, credentials, and integrations remain reachable and functional
  • Reviewing token expiration dates for open sharing recipients and rotating as needed

Automate these checks where possible using Workflows and automation or validation notebooks. Regular testing helps catch configuration drift early and prevents consumer-facing outages or access issues.

Update notebooks and example content​

Sample notebooks and example content are often the first hands-on experience consumers have with your product. Keep them current as your offering evolves:

  • Update schemas, column references, and example queries
  • Refresh visualizations and outputs to reflect current data
  • Add new examples that highlight emerging or high-value use cases

Well-maintained notebooks reduce onboarding friction and keep your data product relevant.

Refine listing content​

Periodically review and refine your Marketplace listings to ensure descriptions, metadata, and use cases accurately reflect what is being delivered. Use the Marketplace Analytics Dashboard and system tables to understand:

  • Views, requests, and installs over time
  • Conversion rates from discovery to access
  • Which listings or assets resonate most with consumers

Use these insights to clarify positioning, improve descriptions, add examples, or adjust access models. Treat analytics as a feedback loop for product improvement, not just reporting.

Sustain governance continuity​

Governance should be an ongoing practice, not a one-time setup. Clearly define and document roles and responsibilities for:

  • Marketplace administrators
  • Data or model owners
  • Stewards responsible for quality and compliance
  • Support and escalation contacts

Maintain internal documentation for entitlement workflows, listing updates, incident response, and deprecation policies. This ensures continuity as teams change and helps keep your Marketplace program compliant, consistent, and scalable.

Deprecate listings and shares​

When sunsetting a listing or share, follow a structured process to minimize disruption:

  1. Communicate early - Notify active consumers well in advance (30-90 days depending on criticality)
  2. Provide alternatives - If a replacement exists, document the migration path
  3. Set a cutoff date - Be explicit about when access will end
  4. Revoke access gracefully - Remove grants before deleting shares to allow for rollback if needed
  5. Archive documentation - Keep records of what was shared, to whom, and why it was deprecated

For programmatic cleanup, see Workflows and automation.

Summary​

Strong Marketplace providers:

  • Plan for change
  • Validate continuously
  • Invest in enablement
  • Use analytics to guide iteration
  • Treat governance as a long-term discipline

Following this runbook helps ensure your data, model, and collaboration products remain trusted, discoverable, and valuable throughout their lifecycle.

What's next​