Custom properties, relationships, and asset types

You can extend the default set of properties, relationships, and asset types available for governance artifacts and catalog assets by creating custom properties, relationships, and asset types.

Use custom properties, relationships, and asset types when important details about your data can't be captured by using default properties, relationships, and asset types. Custom properties, relationships, and asset types are created by administrators. For users who work with governance artifacts or catalog assets, custom properties, relationships, and assets appear and behave the same as predefined properties, relationships, and assets.

All asset types in catalogs support custom properties and relationships. The following governance artifacts support custom properties and relationships:

Categories
Business terms
Classifications
Data classes
Governance rules
Policies
Reference data sets

Required permissions

You must have the following user permissions:

Manage glossary

To view definitions for artifacts and assets, including custom properties, relationships and asset types, select Administration > Configuration and settings from the navigation menu, and then select Asset and artifact definitions.

Use the filter icon on the following tabs to filter for items:

Artifacts: Filter governance artifacts by custom relationships and custom properties that are assigned to them.
Assets: Filter catalog assets by origin (predefined, custom) and custom properties assigned to them.
Custom properties: Filter custom properties by property types (date, number, predefined values, text) and scope.

How users apply custom properties, relationships, and asset types

After you create custom properties, relationships, and asset types, users can apply them in the same ways as predefined properties, relationships, and asset types. Users who have the required permissions can perform these tasks:

Add values for custom properties or add custom relationships to governance artifacts. Subject to artifact workflows. Requires the Editor, Admin, or Owner role in the artifact’s primary category.
Assign custom relationships, add values for custom properties, or add custom asset types in a catalog. Requires the Editor or Admin role in the catalog.
Assign custom relationships between artifacts and assets in a catalog. Subject to artifact workflows. Requires the Editor, Admin, or Owner role in the artifact’s primary category and the Editor or Admin role in the catalog.

Making custom properties and relationships mandatory

Mandatory properties

When you create or edit a custom property definition for artifacts, you can mark it as mandatory. Optionally, you can provide default values for mandatory properties.

Mandatory properties are then validated when creating or editing the affected artifact. Any existing drafts are validated upon their first edit after the property is marked as mandatory.

If you defined default values when creating a property, they can be applied when editing the artifact. Applying default values doesn't overwrite any values that were already provided.

Mandatory relationships

When you create or edit a custom relationship definition that is applied to artifacts, you can mark the relationship as required for the specified source. The checkbox is only available if you select Specific item types as the source and specify only the artifacts for both, source and target.

Whenever you create any artifact that was specified as a source for such mandatory relationship, the relationship is applied and you must specify the target for it before you can save the artifact.

Similarly, providing the required relationship details is enforced when you try to edit the already existing artifacts that meet the criteria.

Note: You can restrict mandatory custom properties or relationships to specific categories. When you select the **Restrict by category** option, the property is only required for the artifacts in the specified category hierarchy. Otherwise, the mandatory property becomes global, that is, users must provide the mandatory value before they can save any affected artifact in any category.

When you import artifacts with mandatory properties from a CSV file: