Manual Object Tagging
Manual Object Tagging — apply tags to data entities and columns; the read-side counterpart to Management → Tags.
Tags are the platform's lightweight labelling mechanism — apply them to tables, datasets, columns, and quality tests to drive faceted search, organise the catalog by domain or stage, and signal special handling (PII, Important, Deprecated).
This page is the read-side canonical home for tagging — how operators apply, browse, and filter by tags. The operator-mutating side (curate the tag vocabulary, set the Important flag, manage namespace-scoped tags) lives at Management → Tags.
What tags are
A tag is an operator-curated label that can be attached to any data entity or to any individual column. Tags drive:
Discovery. The Tag facet on Search and Filtering is one of the seven catalog filters; selecting one or more tags narrows the search to entities carrying any of them.
Organisation. Tags are how operators encode lightweight, cross-cutting groupings that do not justify their own Data Entity Group.
Catalog Overview surfacing. The most-used tags surface as the Top tags chip strip on the Catalog Overview home page — one-click filter into the catalog.
Important-flag visibility. A tag flagged as Important in Management → Tags is rendered visually distinct on entity pages and result rows, surfacing high-priority labels (
PII,Restricted,Deprecated) without requiring operators to scan every tag chip.
Applying tags
Apply tags both to data assets as a whole and to individual columns of datasets.
The same UI flow applies at both granularities — open the entity (or column) detail surface, click the tag-management control, and pick from the existing tag vocabulary or create a new tag inline.
The platform exposes three TAG_* RBAC permissions:
TAG_CREATE
Create a new tag in the catalog vocabulary.
TAG_UPDATE
Edit a tag's name or its Important flag.
TAG_DELETE
Remove a tag from the catalog vocabulary.
Plus the cross-cutting TAG_ASSIGNMENT_UPDATED activity-event marker emitted whenever tag assignments on an entity change. This is not an RBAC permission — it is an entry on the ActivityEventType enum, surfaced on the Activity Feed for the affected entity rather than gating who can mutate tags.
For the platform-wide permission catalog and how to compose roles around these permissions, see Permissions.
Tag-driven discovery
Once tags are applied, three discovery paths rely on them:
Search → Tag facet — multi-select filter; results match entities carrying any of the selected tags.
Catalog Overview → Top tags — one-click chip strip filtering into the catalog by the most-used tags across the deployment, rendered on the home page.
Tag-based per-entity badges — tags appear on entity detail pages and in search result rows; Important-flagged tags render visually distinct.
Operator workflow
The full lifecycle of a tag splits across two surfaces by design:
Author the vocabulary — go to Management → Tags to create the canonical tag list, set the Important flag where appropriate, and govern the vocabulary across teams.
Apply tags — on entity detail pages, attach tags from the curated vocabulary to specific entities and columns.
Narrow searches — use the Tag facet on the Catalog page to find tagged entities.
Cornerstone 5 holds — two surfaces for two distinct content types: Management → Tags is the operator-mutating canonical home for the vocabulary; this page is the read-side canonical home for applying and finding by tags.
Where to next
Search and Filtering — where the Tag facet narrows the catalog.
Data Entity Groups & Domains — the heavier-weight grouping mechanism for related entities (datasets, transformers, quality tests).
Management — the operator-mutating side: tag vocabulary curation, Important flag, namespace scoping.
Permissions — the platform-wide permission catalog, including the three
TAG_*rows.
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