Setting up business glossaries
Creating a new business glossary requires planning and a clear understanding of what issues the business glossary is intended to address. If you have been assigned the Steward role in the Management Console of your organization's Qlik Cloud environment and are tasked with creating or managing a business glossary, you will want to know the key business terms the glossary will contain and how they relate to one another.
Business glossaries can be imported, easily creating terms and categories you can then customize, or they can be created, allowing you to build your terms and categories.
Considerations when setting up a business glossary
A few initial considerations include:
- How are terms used across various lines of business?
- How engaged are subject matter expert engagement?
- Do you have best practices for defining terms and categories?
- Have you identifying related policies and procedures?
Terms use across various lines of business
Consider ow are the terms used across various lines of business or use cases and what clarity can this business glossary provide. For example, terms can mean different things to different areas of the business. The term customer means something different to IT and sales; to IT a customer may involve technical setup and environmental maintenance where for business or sales, a customer may be a contractual entity with related payment terms, conditions, and service level agreements.
Identify where different understandings of the same term could lead to ambiguity and misalignment. The term customer will fall under categories for both IT and sales so that both groups are working from the same definition. Multiple lines of business may have an organizing CustomerCategory that includes the term Customer but also other terms that are contextual for each department related to protocols around setup, maintenance, or contracts that are not applicable to other departments.
Subject expert engagement
Ensure participation from the subject experts who will be responsible for various categories and terms within those categories. Assignment of ownership and distributed roles helps to drive adoption across various departments.
Best practices for defining terms and categories
Establish best practices for defining terms. As Steward of a business glossary, you can define foundational attributes for every term in the Term template found in the Glossary details tab. Once you add custom term attributes, they display as attributes to be defined in Related information. For more information, see Term template and Creating and configuring terms.
Related policies and procedures
Identify related company operating policies and procedures that can be linked to the Glossary overview. This tab allows for the addition of hyperlinks, mission statements, and any type of content that can help to generate engagement. The business glossary becomes richer and more valuable as more users contribute, use, and maintain it. For more information, see Glossary overview.
Importing a business glossary
Business glossaries can be imported from other Qlik Cloud environments in the Qlik glossary format. Qlik Cloud also supports import of Atlan and Apache Atlas glossary formats. Qlik Cloud business glossaries are JSON files. A glossary can be exported to the Qlik Cloud glossary format.
Do the following:
- Select Add new and select Import glossary.
- Select Upload data file.
- Drag and drop your data files into the Drop your file here dialog.
Alternatively, select Browse and navigate to your glossary files. -
Select the File format you are importing. Options include: Qlik glossary, Atlas glossary, Atlan glossary.
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By default, the glossary is saved to your Personal space. Select Import.
The glossary can be moved to a different space in the next step, configuring the Glossary details. For more information, see Glossary details.
Creating a business glossary
Creation of a business glossary in Qlik Cloud is a one step process. The only mandatory requirement is a name for your business glossary.
Do the following:
- Select Add new and select Create glossary.
The Details tab opens within the Glossary details tab. For information on what values to enter in your Details fields, see Details
Once your glossary is created, you can start adding terms and categories. For more information, see Creating terms and categories.