How to use Atlan AI for documentation

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:

• Document tables and views with AI-generated descriptions
• Document child assets with AI-generated descriptions
• Document terms and categories with AI-generated descriptions
• Document terms with AI-generated READMEs
• Add an Atlan AI-generated alias to supported assets

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 on any screen, 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.
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.
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.
8. (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:

• Amazon QuickSight analysis visuals, dashboard visuals, and dataset fields
• dbt Cloud and dbt Core columns
• Looker fields for explores and views
• Microsoft Power BI columns and measures
• Salesforce fields
• Sigma dataset columns and data element fields
• SQL columns
• Tableau data source fields and calculated fields
• ThoughtSpot visualizations

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 on any screen, 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.
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.
8. (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! 🎉

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 menu on any screen, click Glossary.
2. Under Glossary in the left menu, 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.
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 menu on any screen, click Glossary.
2. Under Glossary in the left menu, 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 README to the term.
5. Click anywhere in the text box to edit or format the text and then click Save.