u/curiousbrickster

Hey all, sharing some of our recent updates to Lakeflow Designer:

• Default enablement: Lakeflow Designer is now enabled by default for all free edition, premium, and enterprise tier workspaces.
• AI semantic operator search: The operator panel now suggests operators based on intent. For example, typing “average by month” surfaces the Aggregate operator
• User-defined operators: You can now create user-defined operators that appear alongside built-in operators. These are custom operators that can do anything you can write in Python
• Configurable sample size: You can now explicitly set the number of sample rows run with each operator.
• Git, import, clone, and export: You can now export, clone, and import visual data prep files using File > Export or File > Clone. Files can also be stored and managed in Git folders.

Link to release note -- https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/release-notes/product/2026/may#lakeflow-designer-updates

The feature I’m personally most excited about is user-defined operators. The basic idea is that you define the fields you want to expose in the operator UI with a YAML file, then write the Python code that runs behind it. That makes it possible to extend Designer with your own custom logic, while still giving users a reusable visual operator they can drag onto the canvas.

A few examples could be:

• An operator that writes an Excel file directly to SharePoint
• An operator that sends an email based on the output of a workflow
• An operator that runs your team’s custom forecasting logic
• An operator that generates a formatted Excel or PDF report from a table
• An operator that calls an internal API or service

The hope is that this opens up a lot of use cases that were previously either hard to do in Designer or required dropping into a bunch of custom Python. Full docs available here -- https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/designer/user-operators

Would love to hear any thoughts or feedback if you try these out!