Understanding Glossary

Glossary Terms are used to construct a business glossary. Each Glossary Term belongs to a Glossary Section, which provides the ability to group Glossary Terms into meaningful divisions. This helps establish a well-rounded data governance program.

Terms can be applied to MI content; e.g., External Reports, Datasets, Metrics, and Dataset Reports to identify the data that resides within the Element. For example, a Global Sales Analysis report might have the Term "Global Sales" attached to it because the report contains that data. Global Sales has a specific business definition, description, and owners that maintain that definition across the enterprise. These owners are likely to report to a data governance officer.  

Glossary Page

Accessed from Content > Glossary, the Glossary Page allows users to:

  • View the list of the existing Glossary Terms and their associations with objects
  • Access the existing Glossary Terms to open the Editor
  • Add new Terms manually
  • Load Terms to the application in bulk from a CSV file
  • Replace one Term with another one
  • Delete the selected Terms

Glossary can be created/edited by an Admin. Power Users can only view the Glossary Page and manually add new Terms.

Glossary Term Editor

Info

When creating a new Glossary Term, Name, Section, Definition, Description, and some additional metadata such as Owners/Steward need to be provided. Owners/Steward defaults to current User if left blank; Data Steward is optional. All these fields are editable.

Associations

The Associations Tab where users can add or remove the Term to/from the associated Elements and Datasets. It also reflects information about which Elements and Datasets already include the Glossary Term.

It is also possible to associate Terms with Elements and Datasets automatically. Find more info in Glossary Auto Synchronization.

When associated with an object, Glossary Terms are visible on Tile Info, Tile Previews, Viewers, and Search page. They can be used for filtering search results.

History

The History Tab includes information about changes that have been made to the Term on the Info Tab.