How to link terms to assets

Once you've set up a glossary, you can link terms from your glossary to your data assets in Atlan.

Linking glossary terms with your data assets can help you:

• Provide additional context for your assets to other users in your organization.
• Create common definitions once and apply them many times to multiple assets.
• Offer an abstract point for applying tags to be propagated to all linked assets — including their downstream and child assets — if propagation is enabled.

Example

If your data assets include personal information — for example, email addresses — you can link your assets to an Email Address term to provide context to your users.

• You can define the term Email Address once in the glossary.
• You can link the term to all the columns where an individual's email address appears.
• You can also tag the term as PII — and all of the linked assets will be tagged as PII.

Link terms to your assets

To link a term to an asset:

From a term

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 link to your assets.
4. In the term profile, next to Overview, click Linked assets.
5. Click + Link Assets to get started. 
6. (Optional) In the sidebar on the right, under the search bar, click an asset type to filter your assets — for example, Column.
7. In the sidebar on the right, select the asset(s) to which you would like to link the term.
8. At the bottom of the sidebar, click Link asset(s) to confirm your selections.
9. (Optional) Under Linked Assets, next to the search bar, click the export icon to export linked assets for terms to spreadsheets.

From an asset

1. From the left menu on any screen, click Assets.
2. On the Assets page, select the asset to which you would like to link a term.
3. Under Terms in the asset sidebar, click the + sign to add a term to your asset.
4. In the dialog, expand the glossary menu and then click the term you would like to link to your assets.
5. Click Save to confirm your selections.

You can now view linked assets for your glossary term! 🎉

Unlink terms from your assets

To unlink a term from an asset:

From a term

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 unlink from your assets.
4. In the term profile, next to Overview, click Linked assets.
5. (Optional) Under Linked Assets, next to the search bar, click the export icon to export linked assets for terms to spreadsheets before unlinking them.
6. Under Linked assets, navigate to the asset(s) from which you would like to unlink the term.
7. To the right of the asset name, click the three dots and then click Unlink asset.

From an asset

1. From the left menu on any screen, click Assets.
2. On the Assets page, select the asset from which you would like to unlink a term.
3. Under Terms in the asset sidebar, hover over the term, and in the top right of the term popover, click the unlink button to unlink the term from the asset.

Your assets will now be unlinked from the glossary term.