Data sources

Browse, share, and manage data sources in your Felt workspace — Felt Servers, the Global Library, Cloud sources, and Raster infrastructure.

A data source in Felt is a managed, shareable home for datasets that the whole workspace can use. Felt Servers, the Global Library, Cloud sources, and Raster infrastructure sources expose layers that members can preview and add to maps, and carry their own permissions.

Data sources are the shareable, persistent sources that appear across the workspace. If you're working with individual files, URLs, spreadsheets, or QGIS projects on a single map, see Upload Anything.

Data source types

• Felt Servers — Felt-managed workspace catalogs that hold layers you've published from maps. Organized with folders. Professional includes 1 Felt Server; Enterprise allows unlimited.

• Global Library — Curated datasets from Felt — regional boundaries, census, imagery, basemaps. Free to use and free to store.

• Cloud sources — Live connections to your databases, warehouses, object storage, and OGC/Esri services. Enterprise plan.

• Raster infrastructure — Streaming access to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs and STAC catalogs from your own cloud storage. Enterprise plan.

Browsing data sources

You can browse your workspace's data sources from two places:

• Workspace homepage. The Data sources section on the workspace homepage lists the Global Library and every Felt Server, Cloud source, and Raster infrastructure source in the workspace you're permitted access to.

• In-map library. Clicking in the map toolbar opens the same catalog in a dialog, so editors can add layers to the current map without leaving it.

Searching

The search bar at the top of the library searches every source your workspace has access to in a single pass — every folder in every Felt Server, every Cloud source, and the Global Library. Each source also has its own search input scoped to that source only.

Recent data

The Recent data tab at the top of the Data sources list aggregates layers you've recently previewed, added to a map, or published, across every source. It keeps your most-used data a single click away regardless of where it lives.

Previewing a layer

Click any layer to open the preview panel on the right. It has three tabs:

• Map — a live preview on a basemap, with styling applied.

• Table — the layer's data table, when applicable.

• Metadata — name, description, last-updated time, and other information about the dataset.

From the preview panel, click Add to map to add it to the map you're viewing, or from the workspace homepage, click Create map to start a new map with the layer included.

Adding a new data source

From the the workspace homepage, click + next to Data sources, or + New data source from the in-map library.

Sharing and permissions

Every data source is either private (invite-only: only people invited by email can use it) or public (accessible by everyone in the workspace). For more information, see Sharing a data source.

The Global Library is visible to every workspace and has no sharing controls.