Drupal Purview Integration for Enterprise Data Portal - Canadian Blood Services

Sector(s)

Healthcare

Team Members

smulvih2

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Organizations Involved

Cinder Systems Corp.

Community contributions

As part of this engagement, we released a new open-source Drupal project:

Drupal Purview – an extensible suite for integrating Microsoft Purview APIs into Drupal.

Community contributions included:

Purview Integration Module Development: Released a Drupal module providing API clients for Microsoft Purview’s Unified Catalog, Classic Types, and Graph API, along with a submodule demonstrating example search interfaces for glossary terms, data products, and governance domains.
Automated Testing Integration: Implemented unit and kernel test coverage for API functionality, configured to run both locally and within Drupal’s GitLab CI environment to ensure code quality and reliability for all releases.
Open Data Governance Reference: Shared the project as an open-source reference implementation, enabling other organizations to leverage Drupal as a front-end framework for their Microsoft Purview-based data governance initiatives.

*** All screenshots associated with this case study use fictitious data and do not represent actual project information.

Canadian Blood Services (CBS) launched its Enterprise Data Governance Portal to make internal data assets more discoverable, standardized, and governed across the organization. In 2025, as part of the development team supporting Canadian Blood Services, we extended the portal with deep Microsoft Purview integration, enabling real-time access to enterprise business glossaries, data catalogues, and metadata through Drupal.

The initiative focused on enhancing data discoverability, improving transparency, and making enterprise metadata more accessible and meaningful to non-technical business users, all while maintaining strict data governance and security standards.

This project built upon CBS’s existing Drupal-based platform and was completed over a four-month engagement, culminating in a live demonstration at the Data Governance Symposium (2025).

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome)

Project goals

Integrate Microsoft Purview directly into Drupal, allowing authenticated users to browse governance domains, enterprise glossaries, and data products.
Simplify access to metadata for non-technical stakeholders through intuitive UI components.
Enhance system performance through caching, automation, and API optimization.
Improve maintainability and long-term sustainability of the platform

Key deliverables

Purview Integration Module: Developed a Drupal module providing API clients for Microsoft Purview’s Unified Catalog, Classic Types, and Graph API. A supporting sub-module delivers an example implementation of the search interfaces for glossary terms, data products, and governance domains, showcasing how Drupal can serve as a powerful front end for enterprise data governance.
Unified Catalog Interface: A central listing page with faceted search, filters, and off-canvas detail views for metadata exploration.
Glossary Tree Navigation: Hierarchical visualization of business terms for easier discovery and contextual browsing.
Persona-Style Owner Rendering: Integration with Microsoft Graph API to render user initials, tooltips, and multi-owner metadata for Purview assets.
Advanced Caching Layer: Leverage Drupal’s cache API and cron for cache warming to deliver near-instant responses from Purview data; much faster than browsing directly in Microsoft Purview itself.
Automated Testing Framework: Implemented comprehensive unit and kernel test coverage for the Purview integration modules, ensuring API stability and data integrity.

Outcome

The project was delivered on time for CBS’s internal Data Symposium presentation.

Key results included:

Enhanced Governance Visibility: Enabled stakeholders to explore relationships between datasets, owners, and glossary terms directly within Drupal, improving data transparency and accessibility.
Improved Data Health Insights: Introduced visibility into Purview data health scores within Drupal, allowing users to assess data quality and completeness directly from the catalog interface.
Faster Page Load Times: Optimized caching and API prefetching reduced latency for metadata-heavy pages, improving overall responsiveness and user experience.
Open-Source Involvement: Delivered the Drupal Purview integration as a publicly available Drupal module, enabling other organizations to accelerate their own data governance initiatives by leveraging the same unified catalog, search, and glossary capabilities built for CBS.

The integration established CBS’s data governance portal as a centralized metadata hub, improving efficiency and transparency across the organization.

Why Drupal was chosen

Drupal was the ideal foundation for CBS’s Data Governance Portal due to its proven strengths in:

Flexible API integration: Drupal’s service-oriented architecture and core support for decoupled integrations allowed seamless communication with the Microsoft Purview REST APIs.
Enterprise scalability and access control: With its role-based permissions, workflows, and multilingual capabilities, Drupal provided a secure and structured environment suitable for enterprise governance.
Strong governance alignment: Drupal’s configuration management and auditability aligned naturally with CBS’s data governance framework, supporting traceability and transparency.