How to create a business glossary inside Atlan and leverage it for faster search.
🗂️ What is a Business Glossary?
A Glossary is a list of terms, organized in a way to help users understand the context of their data assets. For example, terms like "cost", "pandl", "revenue", etc, can be used to group and search all financial data assets.
The use of familiar terminology helps in quickly understanding the data and its background. It is a crucial element of data governance as it helps in bringing the business understanding closer to an organization's data initiatives.
On the Atlan product, glossary terms can be attached to any data asset and can be leveraged to power quick and easy data discovery.
Feature highlights of Atlan Glossary
🔍 Powers search and ease the discoverability of data assets.
🔖 Incentivizes the creation, maintenance, and enrichment of business and functional terms consistently due to its direct and visible use in enabling search.
👩 👨 Allows organizations to crowdsource the task of attaching appropriate glossary terms to data assets.
🤖 Supports automated metadata management through auto-glossary suggestions powered by the Atlan Bot.
🏛️ The Anatomy of Glossary inside Atlan
Atlan gives users an option to build glossaries in a hierarchical fashion. Glossary term is the lowest unit that can exist independently inside a glossary or can be grouped within categories.
✨ Spotlight: This structure allows for glossaries from multiple domains to co-exist.
Let's look at how terms and categories work together to build a glossary.
🏷️ Term:
A term is the lowest unit which is unique inside each glossary.
It describes the content of the data assets in the most useful and precise way.
It can exist independently, without belonging to any particular category or sub-category.
✨ Spotlight: A term can also be used on the discover page to quickly filter data assets.
Gloassary term page on Atlan
📁 Category:
A category is used to group the terms of a similar context together. it is just a way of organizing terms.
🌟 Pro Tip: You can also add sub-categories within your categories to provide more context to the glossary.
Categories and sub-categories inside glossary
🛠️ A step-by-step guide to set-up your glossary inside Atlan
STEP 1: Add a new glossary
1.
Go to the Glossary tab.
2.
Click on the + Add button, given in blue (on the bottom left of the screen).
3.
A modal will open where you will have to give your glossary a name and an appropriate description to define what it is.
Add a new glossary
STEP 2 {Optional but recommended 🤓 }: Add a category inside your newly created Glossary
1.
Click on the ellipsis next to the glossary name and select the option to add a new category.
2.
Add a name and description to your category for better understanding.
👉 Example: To add another layer of context inside "Health Care" glossary, create a category COVID-19 before adding terms.
How to add a category
STEP 3 {Just Optional 😃 } : Add a sub-category
1.
Click on the ellipsis next to the category name and select the option to add a new sub-category.
👉 Example: Inside the COVID-19 category, you can go a level deeper and create a sub-category named WHO, which will include all glossary terms linked to data released by WHO.
Create a sub-category
STEP 4 {It's a must ✔️ }: Create terms
1.
Click on the ellipsis next to the category or sub-category name and select the option to add a new term.
2.
Give it an appropriate name and description.
🧙♂️ Remember: The term will be used to recognize and filter the data assets. Hence, keep it short and precise.
Filter assets using glossary terms
🌟 Pro Tip: You can also add a README for each term to add more details about it.
STEP 5 (We won't let you forget that 📎 }: Link your data assets with appropriate glossary terms.
Just click on the data asset listed on the discovery tab, to open its profile on the right side. There only an option to add Glossary terms is given. You can also go to an individual data asset page and add glossary terms there.
Add glossary term
You can also click on each term inside the glossary tab and click on the "Link Assets" button in blue to link the term to respective data assets.
Link assets via terms page
🚀 Superpowers
👩 👨 Crowdsource your Atlan glossary without losing its hygiene.
To know more, check out the article linked below 👇
If you already have your business glossary in place, fear not, we will not ask you to re-do the work. Atlan will let you upload your glossary as it is.