Automatic hyperlinking

Important 

In Collibra 2024.05, we launched a new user interface (UI) for Collibra Platform! You can learn more about this latest UI in the UI overview.

Use the following options to see the documentation in the latest UI or in the previous, classic UI:

In this topic

In Collibra, every asset is a potential "target" of a hyperlink. If the name of an asset is mentioned somewhere in a text attribute of another asset, that mention automatically gets a hyperlink to the corresponding asset. Collibra keeps all hyperlinks up to date when you edit your data.

You can enable or disable automatic hyperlinking at the following levels:

  • Environment: Contact Collibra Support if you want to enable or disable automatic hyperlinking in your entire environment.
  • Domain: If automatic hyperlinking is enabled in Collibra Console, you can enable or disable it at the domain level. Because every asset is a possible target, automatic hyperlinking can lead to an excessive number of hyperlinks, which can negatively affect performance. Therefore, automatic hyperlinking is disabled by default for all domains. However, you can enable it.
  • Asset types: You can exclude asset types, which will exclude assets of those types from automatic hyperlinking. Excluding assets from automatic hyperlinking can improve performance.
  • Individual assets: An asset may have a common word as its name, for example, "is," "a," "or," or "and." In such cases, creating hyperlinks to this asset could result in several useless hyperlinks. To avoid this, you can exclude such assets from automatic hyperlinking.
Note 
  • If there are assets with identical names, they are shown in a dialog box in the lower-left corner of your screen when you click a hyperlink. You can then select one to open its asset page.
    Hyperlink has multiple destinations
  • After importing data or after a backup has been restored, Collibra triggers a rebuild of the automatic hyperlinks. You can also rebuild the hyperlinks manually.
  • By default, automatic hyperlinking is not case sensitive. For example, an asset "Nato" will also be hyperlinked if it is mentioned as "NATO," and vice versa.
    Contact Collibra Support to change case-sensitivity for automatic hyperlinking.

Enable automatic hyperlinking

Automatic hyperlinking creates a hyperlink to an asset if its name is mentioned on another asset, for example, in a text attribute. This is especially useful for linking to Business Term assets. However, as every asset is a possible target, automatic hyperlinking can lead to an excessive number of hyperlinks, which can negatively affect performance. Therefore, automatic hyperlinking is disabled by default for all domains. If you want to use this feature, you can enable automatic hyperlinking at the domain level.

Prerequisites

Ensure that the automatic hyperlinking setting is enabled. Contact Collibra Support if it isn't enabled.

Steps

  1. Go to the domain page of the domain for which you want to enable automatic hyperlinking.
  2. Click ActionsAuto hyperlinks.
    The Auto Hyperlinks dialog box appears.
  3. Clear the No Automatic HyperlinkPrevent Automatic Hyperlinks for assets in this domain checkbox.
    The dialog box closes.

Disable automatic hyperlinking

You can disable automatic hyperlinking at the domain level and the asset level.

Contact Collibra Support if you want to enable or disable automatic hyperlinking for your entire environment.

An asset may have a common word as its name, for example, "is," "a," "or," or "and." In such cases, creating hyperlinks to this asset could result in several useless hyperlinks.

You can still manually create hyperlinks that target the asset.

Steps

  1. Open an asset page.
  2. Click ActionsAuto hyperlinks.

    The Automatic Hyperlinks dialog box appears.
  3. Select the No Automatic HyperlinkPrevent Automatic Hyperlinks for assets in this domain checkbox.
  4. Click Save.

    All automatic hyperlinks to the asset are removed and Collibra no longer creates automatic hyperlinks to the asset.

Note If you again enable automatic hyperlinking to the specific asset, rebuild the hyperlinks.

Collibra Platform can automatically create hyperlinks to assets. However, you can delete some or all of the hyperlinks without affecting other potential automatic hyperlinks to the destination asset.

Steps

  1. Open an asset page.
  2. Click in the text field with an automatic hyperlink. Click a text attribute, for example, the definition, to edit the text.
  3. Select the hyperlinked text.

    An action list appears.
  4. In the Edit toolbar, click (Remove autohyperlink) (Prevent auto hyperlinking).

    The hyperlink is removed.

  5. Click Save, to save the content of the text field. Click out of the text field to save the content of the text field.

    The automatic hyperlink is removed, but if you edit the text field again and you add the same text, the automatic hyperlink will again be created.
Note 
  • If the hyperlinks are rebuilt, for example, after restoring a backup, the hyperlinks may reappear.

  • To prevent an automatic hyperlink to a specific asset, you must disable automatic hyperlinking for the target asset or the domain of the target asset.