External Tags¶

An External Tag comes from a connected data catalog, such as Atlan, Alation, or Microsoft Purview. It is imported during a manual pull sync and applied to the catalog assets the connector can match to Qualytics assets. The catalog stays the place where your governance team names, describes, and assigns it.

External tags are always global: every user can see them and filter by them. A tag created in Qualytics is a Global Tag or a Team Tag. See Types of Tags for a side-by-side comparison.

What External Tags Are For¶

Shared context: Use the labels your governance team already maintains, such as Customer Data, Finance, or PII, while reviewing data quality.
Less duplicate setup: Import catalog tags instead of recreating each one by hand.
Focused review: Filter assets, checks, and anomalies by an imported tag, for example to find assets in scope for a policy review. A tag helps define scope, but it does not establish compliance on its own.
Clear ownership: Catalog-managed names, descriptions, colors, and assignments stay read-only in Qualytics.

Who Sees an External Tag¶

Where	Who sees it
The Tags page and tag filters	Every user.
Tag pickers on an asset	Every user, but the tag can't be picked.
An asset that carries it	Everyone who can open the asset.

Badges show an external tag with a icon, and its page shows the catalog it comes from at the top of the Overview tab.

Where an External Tag Can Go¶

Only the catalog sync puts an external tag on assets: the datastores, tables, files, and fields the connector matches to catalog assets within the configured scope. Users can't apply an external tag to an asset or remove it, and it can't be moved, removed, or merged from its page. Inheritance is narrower than for other tags: an external tag on a table reaches the table's checks, but not its fields, and an external tag on a datastore stays on the datastore. See Tag Inheritance.

Who Manages External Tags¶

Action	Who can do it
Apply or remove it on an asset	The catalog sync only.
Change its name, description, or color	The data catalog. Changes arrive with the next pull sync.
Set its Category and Weight Modifier	Admins, in Qualytics.
Change its Scope	Nobody. External tags are always global.

How a Tag Becomes External¶

Step	What happens
1	An Admin configures a supported data catalog integration under Settings > Integrations and selects its domain, collection, or other available scope.
2	A user starts a manual synchronization that includes Pull.
3	The connector matches supported catalog assets to Qualytics assets within the configured scope.
4	The tags or classifications of matched assets appear in Qualytics as external tags, on those assets.
5	The synchronization results and errors show which assets and tags were updated.

If an imported tag has the same name as an existing Qualytics tag, the Overwrite Tags setting decides what happens. With it on, the existing tag becomes an external tag: it keeps its assets, loses its team if it had one, and the catalog takes over its description and color. With it off, the imported tag is skipped. An external tag never turns back into a global or team tag.

Sync Boundaries¶

External tags reflect the result of a synchronization, not a live connection to every catalog asset.

Only assets matched by the connector receive imported tags.
Domain, collection, and connector settings limit which catalog assets are considered.
Supported asset types and metadata vary by catalog integration.
Changes made in the catalog appear in Qualytics after a later manual pull sync completes. The Event Driven setting does not pull catalog changes: it only sends supported Qualytics updates to the catalog.

See Data Catalog Integrations for synchronization options and connector-specific behavior.

Weight and Scoring¶

An external tag takes its name and color from the catalog, but its Weight Modifier is set in Qualytics, so it counts toward quality scores and check importance like any other tag. See Weight Modifier.

External Tags in Flows and Filters¶

Every user can pick an external tag in a Flow's trigger and anomaly action filters, and in the Explore filters.
External tags can't be the tag a move or merge sends assets to.

Example¶

A governance team manages a Sensitive Data tag in Atlan and assigns it to three finance tables. An Admin configures the Atlan integration with the domains that contain those tables, and a user runs a manual pull sync. Qualytics matches the tables, and Sensitive Data appears as an external tag on them. Data stewards filter the related checks and anomalies by that tag while investigating. When the governance team later renames the tag in Atlan, the new name appears after the next pull sync.

Key Takeaways¶

External tags come from a data catalog and are always global.
Only the catalog sync applies or removes them. Their name, description, and color are read-only in Qualytics, while Admins set their category and weight.
A manual pull sync imports tags for matched assets in the configured scope. Event-driven sync does not refresh them.