DataWorks provides an end-to-end professional, efficient, secure, and reliable platform for big data development and governance. Before you use DataWorks to develop data, you must make preparations to ensure smooth data development. This topic describes how to prepare an environment.
Background information
Notes for new users
If you use DataWorks for the first time, we recommend that you read the following topics first:
What is DataWorks: describes what DataWorks is, suggestions for purchasing DataWorks, and the basic architecture and development of DataWorks.
Billing overview: describes the billing methods of DataWorks.
Purchase guide: provides recommended DataWorks purchase plans for different scenarios.
Account description
You can log on to the DataWorks console with an Alibaba Cloud account or as a RAM user.
Alibaba Cloud account: An Alibaba Cloud account is a primary account that owns Alibaba Cloud resources. Resource usage is measured and billed to the Alibaba Cloud account. You can use the Alibaba Cloud account to create RAM users for your enterprise, manage the RAM users, and grant permissions to the RAM users.
RAM user: A RAM user is created and managed by an Alibaba Cloud account in Resource Access Management (RAM). A RAM user does not own resources and does not support independent billing. Resources used by a RAM user are billed to the Alibaba Cloud account to which the RAM user belongs.
Prepare an environment
The following figure shows the overall process of preparing a DataWorks environment. 
If you only want to experience DataWorks by using your Alibaba Cloud account, make preparations based on the instructions in Prepare an experience environment for an Alibaba Cloud account. If you want to perform collaborative development together with other users, make preparations based on the instructions in Prepare a formal development environment.
Prepare an experience environment for an Alibaba Cloud account
Prepare an Alibaba Cloud account: Before you use Alibaba Cloud services, you must create an Alibaba Cloud account.
Activate DataWorks: Before you use DataWorks, you must activate DataWorks.
Create a DataWorks workspace: A workspace is a basic unit in which you can manage tasks and members, assign roles, and grant permissions in DataWorks. All development operations are performed in workspaces. Before you perform a development operation, you must create a workspace.
Add a data source or register a cluster to a workspace: Before you perform data development operations in DataWorks, you must add the data source or cluster that you want to use to your workspace. If you want to develop and periodically run scheduling tasks based on the data source, you must also associate the data source with DataStudio.
Prepare a formal development environment
To prepare a formal development environment, you must first complete the same operations for preparing an experience environment. Then, you must create RAM users by using the Alibaba Cloud account and add the RAM users to your workspace for subsequent development operations.
Prepare RAM users for data development in DataWorks: Create multiple RAM users by using the created Alibaba Cloud account and grant different permissions to each RAM user. You can use RAM users that are granted the required permissions in different data development scenarios.
Add workspace members and assign roles to them: After a workspace is created, add the created RAM users to the workspace for collaborative development. DataWorks allows you to perform workspace-level permission management when you add RAM users to a workspace as members. You can grant different permissions on features in the workspace to the members by assigning different roles to the members.
What to do next
After the environment is prepared, you can refer to the module introductions or product tutorials to develop tasks in DataWorks. For more information, see Create the first auto triggered task in DataStudio and Overview.