Ingest Exposures from dbt

Collate reads dbt exposures from your manifest.json file and uses them to extend lineage from your dbt models to the dashboards, ML models, and API endpoints that consume them.

Tip: The downstream entity referenced by an exposure must already exist in Collate before the dbt ingestion runs. Collate matches it by Fully Qualified Name (FQN). If Collate can’t find a match, it logs a warning and skips the exposure.

Supported Exposure Types

Collate maps each dbt exposure to a Collate entity based on its type field. Any other type value is skipped during ingestion.

dbt Exposure `type`	Collate Entity
`dashboard`	Dashboard
`ml`	ML Model
`application`	API Endpoint

How to Ingest dbt Exposures

Follow these steps to link a dbt exposure to an existing Collate entity.

Step 1: Define the Exposure in Your dbt Project

Add the exposure definition to your dbt project and set the FQN of the matching Collate entity. Define the exposure in your dbt project (for example in models/exposures.yml) and set meta.open_metadata_fqn to the Fully Qualified Name of the corresponding entity already ingested in Collate. For more information on defining exposures, see Add Exposures to your DAG.

exposures:
  - name: orders_dashboard
    label: orders
    type: dashboard
    maturity: high
    url: http://localhost:8080/looker/dashboard/8/
    description: >
      Orders dashboard built on top of the orders model.
    depends_on:
      - ref('fact_sales')
    meta:
      open_metadata_fqn: sample_looker.orders  # Collate entity Fully Qualified Name

After adding the exposure, run your dbt workflow (dbt compile or dbt run). The generated manifest.json will include the exposure under the exposures key, with upstream models listed under depends_on → nodes:

"exposure.jaffle_shop.orders_dashboard": {
  "name": "orders_dashboard",
  "resource_type": "exposure",
  "type": "dashboard",
  "meta": {
    "open_metadata_fqn": "sample_looker.orders"
  },
  "depends_on": {
    "nodes": [
      "model.jaffle_shop.fact_sales"
    ]
  }
}

Step 2: Verify

Confirm the linked entity appears as a downstream node in the lineage graph after ingestion completes. Once ingested, the linked dashboard, ML model, or API endpoint appears as a downstream node in the Lineage tab of the upstream dbt table listed under depends_on.

Validation and Error Handling

What Collate does when an exposure can’t be linked to a Collate entity.

Scenario	Behavior
Exposure `type` not one of `dashboard`, `ml`, `application`	Warning logged, exposure skipped
`meta.open_metadata_fqn` missing from exposure spec	Warning logged, exposure skipped
Entity referenced by `open_metadata_fqn` not found in Collate	Warning logged, exposure skipped
Upstream model not yet ingested as a Collate table	Upstream node excluded from lineage edge

Connectors

Connectors

Ingest Exposures from dbt | Downstream Lineage Guide

Ingest Exposures from dbt

Supported Exposure Types

How to Ingest dbt Exposures

Step 1: Define the Exposure in Your dbt Project

Step 2: Verify

Validation and Error Handling

​Ingest Exposures from dbt

​Supported Exposure Types

​How to Ingest dbt Exposures

​Step 1: Define the Exposure in Your dbt Project

​Step 2: Verify

​Validation and Error Handling

Ingest Exposures from dbt

Supported Exposure Types

How to Ingest dbt Exposures

Step 1: Define the Exposure in Your dbt Project

Step 2: Verify

Validation and Error Handling