Reviewing Recommended Terms

Once a data source is found by OneTrust Data Discovery, you can approve, review, or reject them as accepted Terms. Terms are standardized classification labels that define and categorize data assets across structured and unstructured systems, ensuring consistency in governance and metadata frameworks. This allows admin-level users or other authorized individuals to assess terms and relationships when managing large volumes of records scanned by their organization.

To review terms that are organized according to a data source view, see Reviewing Terms Aggregated by Data Source.

To inspect discovered terms

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen will present the total count of discovered terms. You can use the Select Data Source(s) field and the search bar to filter your results.


  2. Expand each term section to inspect the total count of terms by status and the tags associated with this term. Any instance that is marked with Pending Review will have an action noting the number of terms pending.


  3. Reference the progress bar for each term group to inspect the total review progress across all datasets where the term was discovered.


  4. Click the Quick review button to bulk approve the term by reviewing a sample size. You can sort samples by data source and likelihood levels, plus adjust the number of data assets sampled. Use the View link in the Asset column to open the sample's Data Asset Details screen for additional information.
    Note:

    Only data assets with samples will be shown. If there are less assets with samples than the number of samples selected to be shown, no samples will be provided.



  5. Based on your review, use either the Reject all or Approve all button to manage these terms.
  6. Back in the terms list screen, you can click the Review all button for a particular term to be taken to the Term review screen. The screen will be automatically populated with term results according to your selection.


    Note:

    Exporting the full list of terms in this screen is not currently supported. You can, however, use the Catalog Search option or Public Search API to retrieve similar results.

To manage individual terms in pending review

Tip:

This article shows how to manage terms from the Recommendation aggregation method. For more information on how to first adjust your viewing experience in this screen, see Sorting & Viewing Terms for Discovery Review.

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.


  3. Refer to the column details to learn more about where this term was located in the data source. Use the linked text in the Field column to access the given object's Data Asset Details screen for additional context.




  4. You can manage individual term recommendations by clicking the Context Menu icon and choosing one of the following:




    Option

    Description

    Approve

    This will approve all selected recommended terms and also affect the terms that are not in pending status. This cannot be reversed.

    Approved terms can be later reviewed by switching the view selector to Approved.

    Review

    This will open the Review Recommendations modal for you to Approve or Flag for Review. Clicking the term name in the Terms column will also open this modal.

    Reject

    This will reject the selected recommended terms and also affect the terms that are not in pending status.

    You can view these items by switching the view selector to Rejected.

    Flag for Review

    This will flag all selected recommended terms for review and also affect the terms that are not in pending status.

    You can view these items by switching the view selector to Flagged for Review.

    Delete

    This will remove selected recommendations from discovery review screen. The data will be matched with classifiers again in the next scan. Once this process is complete, the term will no longer appear on this asset. Deleted terms may be recommended again during future scans.

To approve pending terms in bulk

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.
  3. Based on your review of the data source, its object and field, plus the likelihood indication, you have two options for bulk approval:

    • Bulk approve all terms in this list by clicking the Approve all button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is approved.

      Confirm by clicking Approve term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.



    • Select multiple term instances with the check box to the left. When ready, click the Approve button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is approved.

      Confirm by clicking Approve term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.



To reject pending terms in bulk

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.
  3. Based on your review of the data source, its object and field, plus the likelihood indication, you have two options for bulk rejection:

    • Bulk reject all terms in this list by clicking the Reject all button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is rejected. The data assets will not be recommended again.

      Confirm by clicking Reject term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.



    • Select multiple term instances with the check box to the left. When ready, click the Reject button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is rejected. The data assets will not be recommended again.

      Confirm by clicking Reject term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.



To flag pending terms for review in bulk

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.
  3. Based on your review of the data source, its object and field, plus the likelihood indication, select multiple term instances with the check box to the left. When ready, click the Flag all button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is flagged.


  4. Confirm by clicking Flag term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.

To review flagged terms

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.
  3. Switch the view to Flagged for review.
  4. Based on your review of the data source, its object and field, plus the likelihood indication, select multiple term instances with the check box to the left.
  5. You will have the option to move these terms to the Approved, Rejected, Delete, or move back to Pending.


  6. To manually approve or reject a singular instance, click the linked term in the Terms column to open the Review Recommendations modal.
  7. Using the details provided by the classification service, decide whether the recommendation fits the instance and likelihood results. You have the option to update the Accepted Term to another term that exists in the Glossary.


    Tip:

    If the Maximum sample size is left at 0 on your classification settings, no data samples will be returned after scanning. Ensure that you provide a count to properly return samples. For more information, see Enabling Data Samples for Classification.

    Important:

    The count presented in the Term instance(s) column identifies the total number of instances, which may include duplicates. This count may differ than the value shown in the Index tab, which identifies the unique values count that excludes duplicates.

  8. When ready, mark this term as Approved or Rejected by clicking the respective button.

To review rejected terms

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Expand the section of your desired term and then click the Review all button. The Term Review screen will filter this list screen with terms that are in Pending Review and aggregated by Recommendation.
  3. Switch the view to Rejected.
  4. Based on your review of the data source, its object and field, plus the likelihood indication, select multiple term instances with the check box to the left.
  5. You will have the option to move these terms to Pending. When ready, click the Move to pending button. This will prompt a confirmation modal that will state how many assets for which the term is pending.


  6. Confirm by clicking Move term. This page may not immediately update to reflect these changes. You can monitor the status of this change in the Status Tracker menu.

To unapprove approved terms

While there is no option in the platform to manually unapprove terms or roll them back to Pending Review or Flagged for Review, you can create an automation rule to achieve this outcome.

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Setup > Automation rules. The Automation rules screen appears.

  2. Click the Add new rule button. The Add new rule modal appears.

  3. Provide the new rule with a unique name, then click the Add button. The Rule details screen appears.

  4. Define the Trigger type: Manual or Scheduled.
  5. For the Conditions block, select the Add custom condition block option. Then, select the following:

    • Select field: choose Approved terms

    • Operator field: choose Equals to any of

    • Enter value field: select one or more terms that are in an approved status.



    Tip:

    You can add additional conditions to specify the metadata/values in order to update the selected approved terms.

  6. For the Actions block, select Flag Recommended Term(s) for Review. This will update the selected approved terms to the Flag for Review status.


  7. Click the toggle at the top to enable the rule.
  8. Click the Save button. This rule is now active and can be triggered manually or run on your defined scheduled.

To export terms

This will export all visible terms on the Terms review screen. Select one or more data sources to filter the export.

  1. On the Data Discovery menu, select Discovery Review > Terms. The Terms screen appears.

  2. Click the Export icon next to the search term field. A direct export will download to your browser.
  3. The CSV export contains the following columns:

    Column Group

    Included Columns

    Basic Details

    • dataSourceName: name of the data source

    • path: full technical path to the item (e.g. table/column, file path, or object path)

    • parentName: parent object, such as table, file, or container name

    • name: field or attribute name

    Term Status/Actions

    • recommendedTerms

    • approvedTerms

    • flaggedTerms

    • rejectedTerms

    • pendingTerms

    • needsReview

    • confidenceScores

    Classification Tags

    • acceptedClassificationTags

    • approvedClassificationTags

    • recommendedClassificationTags

    • pendingClassificationTags

    • flaggedClassificationTags

    • rejectedClassificationTags

    • tagConfidenceScoresString