This week in Maia: Google Cloud runners, Designer improvements, pipeline tests, and more

Welcome to this week's new features blog! We're bringing you a packed set of improvements that make Maia more powerful and intuitive than ever—from enhanced data exploration and expanded cloud support to streamlined variable management and brand-new pipeline testing. For all the details, read our docs changelog.

☁️ Maia runner for Google Cloud

The Maia runner for Google Cloud has been released, expanding hybrid deployment options beyond AWS and Azure. This new runner enables you to seamlessly integrate your Google Cloud infrastructure with Snowflake through Maia's hybrid architecture.

You can create a Google runner through the Runner manager, just like other runners. To streamline deployment, our public repository includes Terraform templates specifically designed for deploying the runner into Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), providing a comprehensive Kubernetes-based deployment experience.

For more information, read our GKE deployment guide and explore the deployment templates in our public deployment library.

🔧 Public API now supports Azure DevOps

You can now provision Maia projects backed by Azure DevOps repositories directly through the Maia API. Once provisioned, Maia operates on your Azure DevOps repository as a machine user. This expansion gives you more flexibility in how you integrate Maia with your existing development workflows and repository management systems.

The Project Provisioning API guide walks you through the one-time prerequisite of granting the service principal access to your Azure DevOps organization and shows you how to use "provider": "azure-devops" in your request body.

🚀 Guided custom connector setup with Maia Team

Setting up custom connectors in Maia just got easier! You can now create custom connectors in Designer without interrupting your workflow, simply by asking Maia Team to help.

In the Maia Team chat interface, ask for help setting up a custom connector, and Maia Team will help you get started without ever leaving the Designer canvas. Maia Team will guide you through custom connector creation and can automatically add the new custom connector to your pipeline, making data ingestion from new sources faster and more intuitive.

🔐 Cloud credential environment overrides and APIs

We've released significant updates to cloud credentials that provide greater flexibility and automation capabilities:

• Cloud credentials now support environment overrides directly in the UI, giving you better control across different deployment stages.
• The Connections API endpoints can now manage cloud credentials programmatically, enabling zero-touch provisioning workflows for AWS, Azure, and GCP credentials.
• Combined with the Project Provisioning API endpoints, you can now fully automate the setup and management of your cloud infrastructure.

Learn more: Check out our updated Cloud provider credentials documentation and the Project Provisioning guide.

🧪 Pipeline testing is now live

You can now create tests for your pipelines! These enable you to perform tests with mock inputs, comparison tests for competitive migration equality, and operational tests like idempotency and temporal behavior.

To get started, make sure that Test suggestions is toggled in in your Maia Team chat interface settings. Maia Team’s built-in skill will then offer to create tests when building a new pipeline. Plus, when you make changes to a pipeline, it will automatically flag any existing tests that are affected.

Tests can also be triggered in bulk via the Maia API Test Execution endpoints. Check out the API reference at that link, or our Test pipelines documentation to learn more.

🖌️ Designer quality of life improvements

We've released a host of improvements for all users in Maia, ranging from variable management to sampling, and from warehouse data to pipeline notes. Read on for all the details!

📐 Manage variables while chatting with Maia Team

Managing variables in Maia just became much more user-friendly! The Variables panel has been relocated from the left panel in Designer to a tab at the bottom of the canvas. This means you can now manage variables while keeping Maia Team visible at the same time.

All variable capabilities remain fully available in the new location, including pipeline variables, project variables, grid variables, and environment overrides. Changes save automatically, eliminating the need for a separate save step.

🧩 Select variables in component properties

You can now search for and add pipeline variables directly in any ‘dual listbox’ type parameter, such as the Column Name parameter in the Table Input component.

Dual listboxes now let you search for and select variables alongside static options. Variables appear in the same picker and can be added to the selection like any other item. This solves a common workflow challenge where you could reference variables in single-value fields but not in multi-value parameters.

🔍 Explore warehouse data without leaving Maia

These improvements let you inspect tables and navigate across databases without interrupting your pipeline work:

• In transformation pipelines, the Schemas panel now shows column details and sample rows when you click a table or view.
• If you work in an environment that spans multiple databases, a database picker is now available when browsing warehouse data, letting you switch databases without changing your environment configuration. This drop-down is available in the Schemas panel and the Warehouse data tab when adding data directly to a pipeline.

🎯 Sampling filter is always visible

The filter field in the Sample data tab in Designer is now visible as soon as a component has been validated, rather than only appearing after a successful sample has been taken. As a result:

• You can now enter a data filter before taking your first sample, perfect for when you already know the filter you want to apply.
• If a sample request fails, the filter bar and retry controls stay on screen, allowing you to correct your input and resample without interruption.

🗒️ And a whole lot more…

We’ve also made the following improvements in Designer, designed to eliminate friction when building pipelines, making the design process smoother and more intuitive:

• Skip, copy, or delete multiple pipeline components at once — Selecting two or more components on the canvas now shows an action toolbar so you can act on the whole group in a single click.
• Shift-click to fine-tune a canvas selection — Shift-clicking an already-selected component now removes just that item from a multi-selection.
• Copy and paste canvas notes — Notes can now be copied and pasted on the canvas, including multi-note selections, so you can duplicate annotations as easily as pipeline components.
• Multi-select note action bar improvements — When multiple canvas notes are selected, a single unified toolbar applies color and other formatting changes to the whole group in one action.

📤 Post-processing and grid variable updates

You can now use grid variables in orchestration component post-processing, and export grid variables from child to parent pipelines. This new feature allows you to reuse values from child pipelines in parent pipelines, update grid variables after an orchestration component runs, and import existing Matillion ETL pipelines that use grid export features more easily. Interested? Read our Post-processing guide for more information.

💬 We'd love to hear from you!

Let us know how these new features are improving your workflows — we're all ears! Feel free to add any comments or questions below.

Want to get involved? Join the Matillion Community to stay up to date, share feedback, and help shape our product roadmap for future innovations.

‍