User journeys

This page is the map of how people actually use DataFlow AI from end to end. Where the Personas & roles page describes who the users are, this page traces what they do — from first login through daily work, incident response, and long-running migration projects. Each journey is summarized here and detailed in a dedicated per-persona guide.

Journey catalogue

The platform has well-documented journeys for all four personas plus the cross-persona Migration Specialist. They fall into four categories: onboarding, daily workflow, task journeys, and incident response.

Every persona's first journey is onboarding, and every onboarding begins with the same guided tour overlay — a step-by-step walkthrough that highlights the canvas, palette, and editing modes before the user touches real data.

The Data Engineer journey arc

Anna's path runs from a cold first login to confidently shipping production pipelines and migrating legacy assets.

   Day 1            Day 2-3           Day 4-5         Steady state
 ┌────────┐      ┌──────────┐      ┌──────────┐    ┌────────────┐
 │  SSO   │─────▶│  Connect │─────▶│  First   │───▶│   Daily    │
 │  login │      │  Git +   │      │  real    │    │  workflow  │
 │  +tour │      │  databases│      │ pipeline │    │  + debug   │
 └────────┘      └──────────┘      └──────────┘    └─────┬──────┘
                                                          │
                                          ┌───────────────┴────────────────┐
                                          ▼                                ▼
                                   ┌──────────────┐               ┌─────────────────┐
                                   │ Build &      │               │ Debug a failure │
                                   │ schedule     │               │ (AI diagnosis,  │
                                   │ a pipeline   │               │ re-run from     │
                                   └──────────────┘               │ checkpoint)     │
                                                                   └─────────────────┘

The full step-by-step walkthroughs — 5-day onboarding, daily workflow, build-and-schedule, debugging, and custom connector development — are in the Data Engineer guide.

The Business Analyst journey arc

Marek's path is deliberately short: the platform targets 30 minutes from first login to a working pipeline, with no code written.

 ┌─────────┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌─────────────┐
 │  SSO    │──▶│ 5-min guided │──▶│ AI builds    │──▶│ Schedule &  │
 │  login  │   │ Design Studio│   │ first 3-node │   │ monitor on  │
 │         │   │ tour         │   │ pipeline     │   │ dashboard   │
 └─────────┘   └──────────────┘   └──────────────┘   └──────┬──────┘
                                                            │
                                  ┌─────────────────────────┴───────────┐
                                  ▼                                     ▼
                          ┌───────────────┐                  ┌────────────────────┐
                          │ AI-guided     │                  │ Self-service       │
                          │ ad-hoc extract│                  │ catalog exploration│
                          │ via AI Chat   │                  │ in Data Browser    │
                          └───────────────┘                  └────────────────────┘

The detailed walkthroughs are in the Analyst & Steward guide.

The Data Steward journey arc

Tomasz's work is investigative and gate-keeping rather than creative. His journeys form a loop of monitoring, reviewing, and certifying.

        ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │                                              │
        ▼                                              │
 ┌─────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐│
 │  Lineage    │    │  Governance  │    │   Quality    ││
 │ investigation│──▶│  review &    │──▶│  monitoring  │┘
 │             │    │ certification│    │              │
 └─────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────┬───────┘
        ▲                                      │
        │           ┌──────────────┐           │
        └───────────│ Audit &      │◀──────────┘
                    │ compliance   │
                    └──────────────┘

The full walkthroughs — lineage investigation, governance review and certification, quality monitoring, and audit — are in the Analyst & Steward guide.

The Platform Admin journey arc

Katarzyna's path begins with a three-day infrastructure build, then settles into operations and incident response.

   Day 1-3 setup                  Steady-state operations
 ┌──────────────────┐          ┌──────────────────────────────┐
 │ Infrastructure   │          │  08:00 morning health check  │
 │ (Terraform/GKE)  │─────────▶│  ──────────────────────────  │
 │ Security (Keycloak)         │  user mgmt | scaling | cost  │
 │ Connectivity     │          └──────────────┬───────────────┘
 └──────────────────┘                         │
                                ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
                                ▼                           ▼
                       ┌─────────────────┐        ┌──────────────────┐
                       │ User & team     │        │ Incident response│
                       │ onboarding      │        │ (PagerDuty P1,   │
                       │                 │        │ bulk retry)      │
                       └─────────────────┘        └──────────────────┘

The detailed walkthroughs are in the Administrator guide.

The Migration Specialist journey

Legacy migration has no dedicated persona — it is performed by a Data Engineer working in the Migration Center. The RFI scope is 500+ PowerCenter workflows and 50–100 Alteryx workflows (roughly 550–600 assets), with auto-conversion targets of >85% for PowerCenter and >75% for Alteryx.

  Phase 1        Phase 2          Phase 3          Phase 4
  Week 1         Weeks 2-3        Weeks 4-5        Week 6
┌──────────┐  ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
│Assessment│─▶│ Batch        │▶│ Validation   │▶│ Cutover      │
│ upload + │  │ conversion   │ │ data-parity  │ │ parallel run │
│ AI report│  │ (AI + rules) │ │ tests        │ │ + decommission│
└──────────┘  └──────────────┘ └──────────────┘ └──────────────┘
 /migration/   /migration/      /migration/      /migration/
   import       conversion       validation        progress

The four-phase walkthrough is documented in the Administrator guide.

Cross-persona telecom journeys

Some journeys span several personas at once. These are characteristic of Polkomtel's telecom domain.

CDR processing pipeline (Engineer + Steward)

Ingest Call Detail Record files from network switches over SFTP → parse the ASN.1 binary format with a custom codec → enrich with subscriber data from SAP HANA via a cached lookup join → aggregate by subscriber, region, and period → run a CDR completeness quality check → load to the Teradata DWH plus Iceberg on GCS. The Engineer builds and operates it; the Steward owns the completeness quality rule.

Subscriber 360 integration (Engineer + Analyst + Steward)

Pull from CRM (SAP HANA), Billing (Teradata), CDR data (GCS), and Network (MSSQL) → merge on the MSISDN subscriber key → deduplicate → apply SCD Type 2 history → quality-score → load to Snowflake.DIM_SUBSCRIBER_360, which feeds the Databricks churn ML model. The Engineer builds it, the Analyst consumes its outputs, and the Steward certifies its lineage.

Review-and-approve handoff (Engineer → Manager / Steward)

An Engineer submits a pipeline for review; a Manager (or, in the Governance Hub, a Steward) reviews the changes and either approves them or requests changes. Approved pipelines may then be scheduled for production. This is the one workflow where the MANAGER role is exercised.

UX innovations and the personas they serve

The journeys above are made smoother by a set of deliberate UX innovations.

Where to go next

Pick the guide that matches your role:

• Data Engineer guide — onboarding, daily workflow, build-and-schedule, debugging, custom connectors.
• Analyst & Steward guide — self-service extracts, catalog exploration, lineage, governance, quality, audit.
• Administrator guide — platform setup, daily ops, user onboarding, incident response, legacy migration.
• Personas & roles — the four personas and how the three role taxonomies map.