Subscription Plans

What are Subscription Plans?

Subscriptions control access to data products as governed by the permissions contained in a subscription plan. These plans are applied by data product owners and define the following:

General Information

• Plan name: The title of the subscription plan used for identification and selection.

• Description: An optional field to provide additional context or details about what the plan includes for potential producers using the template.

Scope

• Visibility: Defines who can see and discover the plan (e.g., restricted to Internal Org or open to Everyone).

• Subscription users: Determines the scale of the subscription, ranging from a Single user to Multi-user groups or Whole organizations.

Subscription and T&Cs

• Subscription method: Sets the "onboarding" flow:

  • Self-serve

  • Self-serve with Payment

  • Request approval

  • Managed

• Pricing: Controls whether the plan pricing Enabled or Disabled.

• Price: If pricing is enabled, this defines the specific dollar amount and the billing frequency (e.g., One-time).

• Terms & Conditions: An optional dropdown to link specific legal or usage agreements that users must acknowledge before subscribing.

Usage and duration

• Usage: Checkboxes to define specific permissions granted by the plan, such as Access, Data sharing, Export, Query, and Spaces.

• Data lineage: Whether a subscription to a data product or asset is required by users of derived data products or assets. 

• Duration: Specifies how long the subscription lasts, either Perpetual (indefinite) or a Fixed duration measured in days.

• User re-subscription after expiry: Controls whether a user can sign up again once their current term ends, which is particularly useful for managing trial periods.

Data Filtering

• Enable: Filter the rows and columns of tabular data at the subscription level allowing Producers to create multiple variations of a single product.  

• Disable: If disabled the plan will not allow for row and column filtering.

A user with an Organization Administrator role can create templates for Subscription Plans and Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) that are available for all product owners within the organization to apply. Alternatively, users with the Ecosystem Administrator role can create templates that are be viewed and applied across all Organizations on the platform.

Information on how Subscriptions are viewed by Data Consumers, can be found here.

Information on how Subscriptions are managed by Administrators can be found here.

Information on how they are applied by Product Owners can be found here.

Finally, information on how Product Subscription templates are created at the Organization and Ecosystem level can be found below.

Step-by-Step Guide: Creating a Subscription Plan Template

To begin, click on the Organization logo on the navigation bar, select the Plan templates tab, and click Create plan template.

Step 1: Identity and Description

• Plan name: Enter a name for the template.

  • Recommendation: Think of the outcome you want when the subscription is applied (e.g., "Full Access Internal").

• Description (Optional): Enter a description to provide context for the subscriber.

Step 2: Define the Scope

• Visibility: Select the default scope for the plan.

  • Internal: Only enables users inside your organization to use the template.

  • Everyone: Allows users inside and outside your organization to use the plan.

  • Custom: (Coming Soon)

• Subscription users: Define how many users the plan applies to.

  •  Whole organization - When a user subscribes to the plan, everyone in their organization gets a subscription.

  • Single user - The subscription is assigned to one user only and cannot be transferred to another user.

  • Multi-user - The subscription provides multiple seats that can be assigned and re-assigned to different users.

Step 3: Subscription and T&Cs

• Subscription method: Select how a request to activate the plan is handled.

  • Self-serve: Best for Trials; users gain instant access.

  • Self-serve with payment: Best for Consumer end-to-end transactions; the journey is completed without manual intervention.

  • Request approval: Access is granted only after a manual review.

  • Managed: Access is manually assigned to users by an administrator.

• Pricing: 

  • Select Enable pricing to define a default Price and frequency (e.g., One-time).

  • Select Disable pricing if the plan is free or you do not want pricing to be visible on platform.

• Terms & Conditions (Optional): Select a set of terms from the dropdown list.

  • Note: You must create Terms & Conditions separately before they appear in this list.

Step 4: Usage and Duration

• Usage: Check the boxes to define the allowed actions for this plan:

  • Access, Data sharing, Export, Query, or Spaces.

• Data lineage: 

  • Select Enforce or Do not enforce to define the required subscription lineage when creating new assets on platform

• Duration: 

  • Perpetual: The subscription does not expire and remains active indefinitely.

  • Fixed duration: Enter the number of days. Access will automatically expire after this period, and subscribers will no longer be able to use the data in a Space or Export it.

• User re-subscription after expiry:

  • Allow re-subscription: Users can sign up again once the term ends.

  • Do not allow re-subscription (Trial): Prevents users from repeatedly signing up (typically used for trial restricted access).

Step 5: Data Filtering 

• Decide if this plan will enable or disable row and column level filtering at the subscription level.

Data Access & Governance through Row and Column Level Filters

• Centralized Enforcement: Row and column restrictions are applied centrally at the subscription level. Usage defined at this level is applied consistently across Exports and Deltashares.

  • Impact on Exports: Every export is evaluated against the associated subscription. Exports cannot exceed the defined scope, and all filtering rules are applied automatically at the time of export.

  • Operational Resilience: If a consumer holds multiple active subscriptions to the same product, access remains uninterrupted even if one expires, providing a more resilient access model.

To enable Row and Column Filtering on a subscription plan select “Enable data filtering” in the “Data” section when building your subscription template.

Self Service with Payments

Where a Subscription Plan with self service payments is created in an Organization, Producers will be able to select it from the ‘Plans’ section of their creation workflow. Such is detailed in Harbr’s User Documentation here : Create a Data Product

From there, producers will be able to configure the parameters of the Plan, whilst seeing in real time what the plan card that will be seen on the exchange will look like. Once the plan and your product are completed you can release the paid Subscription Journey live for consumers. A sample of this templatization is shown below:

Configure Template Options

Ecosystem Administrators have also configuration controls to disable certain options for subscription plan template configuration and prevent users creating subscription templates with these options selected. When used, these controls apply to both Ecosystem and Organization level subscription plan templates. The options that can be disabled are: 

• Request Approval Enabled

• Self Serve Enabled

• Self Serve with Payment Enabled

• Managed subscriptions (this can be used to replace existing feature flag configuration)

• Currency

To configure, Ecosystem administrators must add the following in their Metadata section: 

Key: subscriptionTemplateSettings

Values: {
"requestApprovalEnabled":true,
"selfServeEnabled":true,
"managedEnabled":true,
"selfServeWithPaymentEnabled": true,
"currency":"USD"

}

Note that any existing subscription plan templates and subscriptions that have been created with them will still have this option selected and there will be no change in their behaviour. These should be archived and replaced by new subscription plan templates or updated

If an existing subscription plan templates is edited, the disabled options will also not be available and new options have to be selected. 

Subscription Lineage

To protect data from being redistributed without permission, Organization Administrators can configure subscription lineage rules. Subscription lineage determines whether usage restrictions will carry over when an asset is used to create a new, engineered, or automated data product.

When you add assets to a product, the platform checks the lineage of those assets to identify any enforced subscription requirements:

• No Enforced Lineage: If the assets (or products containing those assets) do not enforce lineage, subscribers can access the product without needing additional subscriptions.

• Enforced Lineage: If any assets in the product have enforced subscription lineage, subscribers will also be required to have access to the original source products. If they do not, they will be blocked from accessing the data in Spaces and Export.

How It Appears to Users

• When a user has permission to use an asset with enforced subscription lineage, the asset appears in their My Collection.

• If the user is missing a required subscription, a "subscriptions required" message will appear on the asset.

Important Considerations

Before publishing a product:

• Review the lineage of included assets to avoid unintended access restrictions.

• Be cautious when changing the lineage of a published product. Doing so requires all subscribers to:

  • Re-subscribe to a new plan.

  • Re-create any work associated with the previous product version in a new Space.

Proper planning of subscription lineage ensures controlled access and prevents unauthorized redistribution of valuable data assets.