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TL;DR

Some capabilities shown here may require additional enablement or licensing. Contact your Atlan representative for details.

Your AI can read this via Docs MCPcurl -fsSL "https://docs.atlan.com/install-docs-mcp" | bashConnect

Use Atlan AI for glossary management

Did you know?

Some capabilities shown here may require additional enablement or licensing. Contact your Atlan representative for details.

Who can do this?

Before using Atlan AI, your admin user must enable Atlan AI in your Atlan workspace.

Atlan AI helps you automate the process of documenting your data assets. You can use Atlan AI to generate meaningful context for your assets and then simply review the content for accuracy and relevance. Accept, reject, or edit any AI-powered suggestions, the choice is yours!

You can use Atlan AI to:

Did you know?

For full transparency, any changes made using Atlan AI are marked as Updated using Atlan AI in the activity log.

Add a description to a table or view​

You can use Atlan AI to add descriptions to your assets in Atlan and provide helpful context to your teams. Supported asset types include:

  • Amazon QuickSight analyses, dashboards, and datasets
  • dbt Cloud and dbt Core models, sources, and tests
  • Looker dashboards, explores, looks, models, tiles, and views
  • Microsoft Power BI workspaces, dashboards, datasets, data sources, pages, reports, tables, and tiles
  • Mode charts, queries, and reports
  • Redash dashboards, queries, and visualizations
  • Salesforce objects, dashboards, and reports
  • Sigma workbooks, datasets, pages, and data elements
  • Snowflake streams
  • SQL tables, views, databases, and schemas
  • Tableau workbooks, worksheets, dashboards, data sources, and metrics
  • ThoughtSpot answers and liveboards

To add a description to a table or view using Atlan AI:

  1. From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click on all assets.

If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets. 2. (Optional) Under the search bar on the Assets page, click the Table tab. 3. (Optional) In the Filters menu on the left, click Properties to expand the menu and select Description to search for assets without a description. 4. Click an asset to view the Overview tab in the sidebar. 5. Under Description, you can either:

  • For assets without a description, navigate to the text box and click use Atlan AI to add an Atlan AI-suggested description.
  • For assets with an existing description, click the text box and then click the Improve using Atlan AI button to replace the existing description with an Atlan AI-suggested one.
  1. (Optional) At the bottom of the Atlan AI is writing... box, click Enhance now to briefly describe your organization and help Atlan AI make more relevant suggestions - this option is only visible to admin users and if the extra context input hasn't been used before, and this additional information added in the Labs toggles is used for all Atlan AI enrichment (not just this one asset).
  2. Once Atlan AI has generated a description, you can:
    • Click anywhere in the text box to edit the text and then click Apply.
    • Click Apply to add the description to your asset.
    • Click Discard to discard the AI-generated description.
    • Click the retry button to generate a new description, compare the two to select the most relevant option, and then click Apply.
  3. (Optional) From the sidebar tabs on the right, click the Activity tab to view the changelog - including the Updated using Atlan AI stamp, user information, and timestamp for the update.

Your AI-suggested table or view description is now live! 🎉

Add a description to a column​

You can use Atlan AI to add descriptions to your columns from the following:

  • Overview tab in the sidebar for column assets
  • Column preview section in the asset profile for table and view assets
  • Columns tab in the sidebar for table and view assets

Supported asset types include:

In this example, we'll use Atlan AI to add a description to a column from the Column preview section in a table asset profile.

To add a description to a column using Atlan AI:

  1. From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click on all assets.

If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets. 2. (Optional) Under the search bar on the Assets page, click the Table tab. 3. Right-click an asset and then select Open profile to view its asset profile.  4. From the asset profile, navigate to the Column Preview section and select a column to document. 5. Under Description, click use Atlan AI to add an AI-generated description to the column. 6. (Optional) At the bottom of the Atlan AI is writing... box, click Enhance now to briefly describe your organization and help Atlan AI make more relevant suggestions - this option is only visible to admin users and if the extra context input hasn't been used before, and this additional information added in the Labs toggles is used for all Atlan AI enrichment (not just this one asset). 7. Once Atlan AI has generated a description, you can:

  • Click anywhere in the text box to edit the text and then click Apply.
  • Click Apply to add the description to your asset.
  • Click Discard to discard the AI-generated description.
  • Click the retry button to generate a new description, compare the two to select the most relevant option, and then click Apply.
  1. (Optional) From the sidebar tabs on the right, click the Activity tab to view the changelog - including the Updated using Atlan AI stamp, user information, and timestamp for the update.

Your AI-suggested column descriptions are now live! 🎉

Describe every undescribed column at once​

Rather than documenting columns one at a time, you can ask Atlan AI to describe every column in a table or view that doesn't already have a description. The run happens in the background, so you can leave the page while it works.

For tables and views, bulk column descriptions are available from the Columns tab in the sidebar.

Who can do this?

This capability requires Atlan AI and the Enrichment Studio capability to be enabled for your tenant. Contact your Atlan representative for details.

To describe all undescribed columns in a table using Atlan AI:

  1. From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click on all assets.

If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets. 2. Click a table or view to open it in the sidebar. 3. From the sidebar tabs on the right, click the Columns tab. 4. Click the Atlan AI icon in the Columns tab header, labeled Enrich column descriptions with AI. 5. Review the run before you start it. Scope reports how many columns have no description. The footer reports the credits needed, the credits remaining for your tenant, and the rate per column. 6. (Optional) Under General instruction, review the guidance Atlan AI applies. As the dialog notes, this applies to every AI-written description on your tenant, not just this table - it's the same description of your organization used for all Atlan AI enrichment. Admin users can click Add or Edit to change it. 7. (Optional) Click How it works to see what the agent reads before writing: column schema, column profile, query history, linked Business Graph terms, and the rest of the table, so sibling descriptions fit together. 8. Click Enrich now to start the run. 9. Atlan AI reports progress as a count - for example, Describing - 12 of 137 - rather than listing each column. 10. (Optional) Navigate away or refresh the page. The run continues on the server, and the Columns tab restores its status when you return. 11. When the run finishes, Atlan AI reports how many columns it described, and separately how many it couldn't. Once you've resolved the cause, you can start a new run for the columns that remain undescribed. 12. (Optional) From the sidebar tabs on the right, click the Activity tab on any described column to view the changelog for the update. Writes from a bulk run are attributed to Context Agent.

Your AI-suggested column descriptions are now live! 🎉

Did you know?

You can also describe a single column inline from the Columns tab, without opening that column in the sidebar.

What to expect from bulk runs​

  • Existing descriptions are left alone. Atlan AI only describes columns that have no description, and doesn't charge for the ones it skips. A description that Atlan AI wrote earlier counts as a description, so the count drops as columns land.
  • One run per parent asset at a time. While a run is in flight, you can't start another bulk run for the same table or view, or describe one of its covered columns on its own.
  • A run can't be stopped. Once started, a bulk run completes in the background.
  • Runs consume credits. The dialog reports the credits needed, the credits remaining, and the rate per column. When a run costs more than the credits you have left, the dialog warns you but still lets you start it. A separate tenant-level credit block is what prevents a run: when that applies, the dialog reads Out of credits. and Enrich now is unavailable.
  • The state is shared across surfaces. A column being described shows the same Generating description state on the Columns tab, in the column sidebar, and on the asset profile. A column covered by a run started from its parent names that parent.

Add a description to glossary assets​

You can use Atlan AI to add descriptions to your terms and categories in Atlan and provide useful business context for your linked assets.

To add a description to a term using Atlan AI:

  1. From the left sidebar, click on all assets and then click on Business Graph.
    • If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Glossary.
  2. Click the name of your glossary.
  3. Under your glossary name, click the category in which your term is nested and then click the term you would like to document using Atlan AI.
  4. You can either add a description from the term profile or sidebar. Under Description, you can either:
    • For terms without a description, navigate to the text box and click use Atlan AI to add an Atlan AI-suggested description.
    • For terms with an existing description, click the text box and then click the Improve using Atlan AI button to replace the existing description with an Atlan AI-suggested one - this option is only available in the sidebar.
  5. (Optional) At the bottom of the Atlan AI is writing... box, click Enhance now to briefly describe your organization and help Atlan AI make more relevant suggestions - this option is only visible to admin users and if the extra context input hasn't been used before, and this additional information added in the Labs toggles is used for all Atlan AI enrichment (not just this one asset).
  6. Once Atlan AI has generated a description, you can:
    • Click anywhere in the text box to edit the text and then click Apply.
    • Click Apply to add the description to your term.
    • Click Discard to discard the AI-generated description.
    • Click the retry button to generate a new description, compare the two to select the most relevant option, and then click Apply.
  7. (Optional) From the sidebar tabs on the right, click the Activity tab to view the changelog - including the Updated using Atlan AI stamp, user information, and timestamp for the update.

Your AI-suggested term description is now live! 🎉

Add a README to terms​

You can use Atlan AI to generate comprehensive READMEs for your terms in Atlan. This provides you with a solid foundation for documenting business context. You can then simply edit the Atlan AI-generated README and customize the format accordingly.

To add a README to a term using Atlan AI:

  1. From the left sidebar, click on all assets and then click on Business Graph.
    • If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Glossary.
  2. Click the name of your glossary.
  3. Under your glossary name, click the category in which your term is nested and then click the term you would like to document using Atlan AI.
  4. In the Readme section of the asset profile, click Use Atlan AI to add an Atlan AI-suggested Readmes to the term.
  5. Click anywhere in the text box to edit or format the text and then click Save.
Did you know?

If there are automated suggestions for asset descriptions, the option to use Atlan AI to document such assets will be unavailable. Automated suggestions are based on user-generated descriptions for similar assets and may be more accurate than Atlan AI-generated descriptions.