Newsletter – Quarterly Update Q4 2025

DataWalk Platform: Tips & Tricks

Did you know that DataWalk’s documentation on the support portal (datawalk-support.com) has a chatbot that can answer your questions about how to do almost anything in DataWalk?  With specific prompts, it can even create JSON configuration files for you that you can use in DataWalk. 

Try it out next time you have a DataWalk question

For DataWalk Users: 

1) Keyboard shortcut for case and project selection: 

Are you tired of clicking the case or project and then OK on the project or case dialog? Instead, you can just double-click on the row, and you will move forward to the next screen. 

2) Three ways to select objects on a link chart: 

1. To select an object on a Link Chart, left-click the object.
2. To select more than one object, do one of the following:
   1. While pressing the Ctrl key, left-click on each object you want to select.
   2. Click  on the left side of the canvas to change your mouse mode and draw a box around the objects to be selected.
3. To select a family of objects (defined as all objects from the same data set), you first left-click one object from that family and then press the F key.
   

3) Keyboard shortcut for deleting an object on a link chart:

Once you select an object on a link chart, you can right-click and find remove on the menu. Or, once you have the object selected, you can use the delete key on your keyboard to remove the object from the link chart. Either way, the object will not be removed from the system. 

4) Keyboard shortcut for saving an object:

• Ctrl+Enter: This keyboard shortcut is used to save Object Folders. This was standardized to prevent accidental saves that could occur by just pressing Enter. It works for saving both new and edited folders.

See the full list of keyboard shortcuts in the DataWalk documentation here: https://docs.datawalk.com/en:admin-guides:latest_release:getting_started:hot_keys:start

For DataWalk Administrators: 

1) Signouts taking your users by surprise? 

The time from the last activity to session timeout is a system configuration variable set by a DataWalk system administrator. Choosing the correct timeout value means balancing security compliance against user behavior needs. Administrators can configure the user session timeout by following the instructions here: 

https://docs.datawalk.com/en:admin-guides:latest_release:access:logout:logout_after_x_minutes_of_inactivity_and_notification_about_session_timeout:start

2) How to remove a user from DataWalk 

What do you do in DataWalk if a user leaves the organization? You may be tempted to remove users directly by deleting their user object, but hold up! 

Deleting users via the [DW] Users set in the GUI is not supported and may lead to dependency inconsistencies. 

Instead, users can be  deactivated so they won’t be visible on the lists in permissions management windows. More sophisticated methods can be done via the API. Learn more here: https://your-datawalk-url/apidocs

3) How to find the ID of a set, link or column

The simplest way to find a set, column, or link ID is in a JSON editor, enter #. This will display a list of all sets, columns, and link types to which the user has access. Or if you are having trouble finding a specific one in the list, you can also find them through the UI: 

• Right-click on the set in the Universe Viewer and click on the last menu item, about.  

• In a table, hover over the column name to display the column ID tooltip. 

• In Universe Viewer, in Object view, hover over the column name to display the column ID tooltip.   

This hover capability exists in many places in DataWalk. 

4) Want to speed up your support response? 

The next time you ask the DataWalk support team to help troubleshoot a problem, consider sending the logs in with your first request. That way, we will have much more information and won’t have to wait for you to send them once asked. The primary method to collect logs from all services and nodes is by using the create-diag-logs.sh script.

• Log in to the installation machine using SSH.
• Navigate to the management directory:
• cd /opt/datawalk/management/ha-management
• Run the script to collect the logs: ./create-diag-logs.sh
• The collected logs will be available by default in the /opt/datawalk/logs directory.

You can then send this package directly to support.