Build a Business Glossary
Add governed term definitions so your whole team and Orion share one vocabulary — acronyms, internal names, and metric aliases
Time: About 10 minutes.
You'll need: A short list of acronyms, internal names, or metric aliases your team uses.
Role: Weaver or Luminary (Tracers and Lenses can view but not edit).
The Business Glossary is where you tell Orion what your words mean. Every team has its own shorthand — "MRR", "active customer", "the East book" — and Orion can't guess those from the data alone. In this tutorial you'll add term definitions, optionally scope one to a domain, and link a term to the metric it means.
Before you start
- You have a Weaver or Luminary role to add, edit, or delete terms. A Tracer or Lens can view the glossary but not change it.
- You have the metrics those terms map to already modeled, so a word like "churn" can point at a real metric. See Metrics.
- To scope a term to a domain, that domain must already exist — the domain picker is populated from your Orion skills. Background: Business Glossary.
Steps
Open the Business Glossary
Go to Context Studio, then Knowledge → Business Glossary. The header shows the current term count and the + Add term button.
Add a term
Click + Add term. An inline form appears with a Term field, a domain dropdown, and a Definition box.
Enter the term and definition
Type the term in the Term field (for example, MRR) and write its meaning in the Definition box (for example, "Monthly Recurring Revenue — sum of all active subscription revenue"). Both fields are required.
Link the term to a metric
When the term is a metric alias, name the exact metric in the definition so a question resolves to the metric you mean — for example "Churn = the monthly_churn_rate metric; voluntary cancellations only, not payment failures."
Choose a scope (optional)
Leave the domain dropdown on All domains to make the term global, or pick a single domain if the term means something different there. A domain-scoped definition overrides the global one when Orion answers within that domain.
Save
Click Save. The term is added and the list re-sorts alphabetically. Orion picks it up for future questions — no rebuild or publish step is needed.
Result
The new term appears in the alphabetically sorted list with its definition, a badge if it's scoped to a domain, and inline edit and delete controls. Orion uses it immediately — ask a question that includes the term and confirm Orion interprets it the way you defined. To change a term later, use the inline pencil control and click Update.
This is the in-product Business Glossary that teaches Orion. It's distinct from the docs-site Glossary, which is the non-editable reference of Celiq's own terms and does not affect Orion.
Next steps
- Group the metrics those terms reference into governed bundles with Create Topics.
- See how terms, metrics, and domains fit together in the Semantic layer overview.
- Explore how the entities behind your terms connect with Use the Knowledge Graph.