An alias is a business-oriented, alternate name that you can specify for your assets in Atlan. You can either manually add a more descriptive and user-friendly alias or use Atlan AI to do the same, if Atlan AI is enabled in your Atlan workspace. This can help you improve the readability of your asset names while providing useful context to your users.
Atlan recommends adding an alias that is unique to each asset, in a one-to-one relationship. To relate your assets, you can instead attach tags to group them by use case or link terms to group them conceptually.
Atlan currently supports adding an alias to the following asset types:
- Tables and dynamic tables
- Views
- Materialized views
- Columns
- dbt models and tests
- Terms
- ThoughtSpot assets — answers, visualizations, liveboards, tables, views, and worksheets
Example
For an asset with a technical name like FCT_SUPPLIER_TRANSACTIONS, you can add Supplier Transaction Records as an alias. Once you have added an alias, you can:
- Search for assets either with their technical names or aliases, Atlan will match on the most relevant title.
- Use the Title property filter to filter for assets either by their technical names or aliases.
- Set asset name display preferences for personas, choosing whether the technical name or alias should be displayed prominently in search and discovery.
- View aliases in search results, asset preview, asset profile, asset sidebar, and lineage graph.
Add an alias
To add an alias to your asset:
- From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets.
- On the Assets page, click any asset with a technical name. To add an alias, you can either:
- Open the asset profile, and to the right of the asset name, click the pencil icon.
- Navigate to the Overview sidebar, and to the right of the asset name, click the pencil icon.
- In the Add an alias dialog, you can either:
- In the Type a business-friendly name field, enter an alias for your asset.
- If Atlan AI is enabled, under Atlan AI Suggested, click an Atlan AI-suggested alias for your asset. (Optional) Click the refresh icon to regenerate Atlan AI suggestions and compare different sets of suggestions.
- Click Add to save your preferred alias for the asset.
- (Optional) Once you have added an alias, you can:
- Hover over the asset name to view both the technical name and alias in a popup.
- From the asset sidebar tabs on the right, click the Activity tab to view alias activity by user and timestamp of update.
- To edit your alias, click the pencil icon to make any changes.
- From the filters menu on the left, click Properties and then click Title to filter assets by the technical name or alias.
Your asset will now display an alias! 🎉
You can also set asset name display preferences to technical name or alias for your personas. If no preference has been specified and an alias is available, then Atlan will display the alias over the technical name on an asset by default.