Business Glossary
What this covers
The Glossary panel lets modellers curate business definitions for model terms. Entries can be user-authored, generated by an LLM bootstrap pass, approved, rejected, hidden, or marked for review. The glossary improves model documentation and gives the agent safer vocabulary for answering business questions.
Entry lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending review | Proposed by automation or import and waiting for a modeller decision. |
| Approved | Accepted definition that can be shown to users and agent workflows. |
| Rejected | Not suitable for the model, but retained for audit and review history. |
Each edit creates a new version on the server. Provenance is kept so reviewers can distinguish user-authored entries from LLM proposals and heuristic fallbacks.
Building the glossary by hand
You do not have to wait for the bootstrap action to fill the glossary. Three buttons on the panel toolbar let you build it directly:
- Add term opens a small form where you type the term, its definition, optional context notes, and synonyms. The entry is saved as approved straight away, so it is live for everyone the moment you save. Use this for the occasional one-off.
- Import CSV takes a pasted spreadsheet. Use a header row of exactly
term,description, then one row per term; every row becomes an approved entry. This is the fastest way to seed a glossary from a list someone already keeps in Excel. If a few rows are malformed, the good ones still import and the panel tells you how many rows had errors. - Revoke link turns off every active public share link for this glossary at once. Anyone holding an old link gets a "not found" page, and no replacement link is created. Reach for it the moment a shared glossary should stop being reachable — for example if a link was forwarded too widely.
Approving every pending entry at once
When the bootstrap proposes many terms, approving them one by one is slow. Approve all approves every entry currently Pending review in a single step. Tessallite applies the same promotion and hidden-column behaviour it would apply to each entry individually — the result is exactly as if you had approved them one at a time, just faster. Review the proposals first; once you trust a bootstrap run, Approve all clears the queue in one click.
Sample values
A glossary entry can carry a few example values drawn from the underlying column — a "Region" term might show EMEA, APAC, Americas. These appear as small chips on the entry so a reader can recognise what the term actually contains without running a query. Up to 20 sample values are kept per entry; the rest are left off to keep the list readable.
Visibility
Visibility controls whether an entry is shown, hidden, or held for review. Use hide for terms that are technically present but not useful to business users. Use review when the definition is probably useful but needs validation from a domain owner.
Hide column
A glossary entry also has a separate Hide column checkbox, and it does more than hide the glossary entry. When the entry is approved, the underlying model column is hidden everywhere it appears: it disappears from the catalogue and from BI clients such as Excel and Power BI. Use it to retire a technical column from business view in one place, rather than hiding it column-by-column on the model. Keep the distinction clear: hiding the glossary entry (above) only affects the glossary; Hide column affects the column itself across the whole model.
Bootstrap recommendations
The bootstrap action proposes glossary entries from the model's dimensions, measures, aliases, descriptions, and available LLM configuration. Treat bootstrap output as a draft. Approve entries only after checking the definition, context notes, synonyms, and confidence.