---
title: "Glossary: Navigating the Hierarchy Tree"
url: "https://atlan.com/demos/glossary-navigating-hierarchy/"
excerpt: "Explore Atlan's hierarchy tree to visually navigate and discover glossaries, categories, and terms, streamlining your data exploration and governance."
description: "Learn how Atlan’s glossary hierarchy tree provides a structured view of glossaries, categories, and terms. With search, filtering, and expand/collapse options, users can quickly find definitions and metadata context. By using the hierarchy, teams improve discoverability, transparency, and governance of business terms."
format: "Video"
duration: "PT1M50S"
video: "https://videos.ctfassets.net/nwa1c00rtgxb/2mBbBtX6fAm5qZPw3jThTU/c55fc7a9456fc4beae70287066bc7a10/Navigating_the_hierarchy_tree.mp4"
thumbnail: "https://images.ctfassets.net/nwa1c00rtgxb/6AwkChxgq1fJSOd7zVJC6Y/cc84559510ec728020a603a9d4368cc5/glossary-navigating-the-hierarchy-tree.webp"
content_purpose: ["Product Overview"]
target_persona: ["General", "Business User"]
journey_stage: ["S2 - Discovery", "C1 - Onboarding", "C3 - Adoption"]
use_case_context: ["Training"]
product: ["Context For AI - Business Graph"]
published: "2025-09-23"
updated: "2026-06-02"
content_type: "video transcript"
transcript_source: "sheet-chaptered"
---

# Glossary: Navigating the Hierarchy Tree

Transcript of the video at https://atlan.com/demos/glossary-navigating-hierarchy/. Each heading is the time (mm:ss) that part starts.

## 00:00 — Expanding the glossary hierarchy tree

The hierarchy tree provides a visual way to explore in discover different glossaries categories in terms is access. By first clicking on the glossary icon on the left-hand navigation, we can clicked the glossary hierarchy. Tree will show. The hierarchy tree begins at the glossary level and displays all glossaries that have been created in an Atlan. Glossaries that have either categories or terms within them. We'll have a right word arrow to the left of that. Clicking on the right word, arrow will expand the hierarchy display for that glossary. One level showing all categories in terms immediately below the glossary.

Once expanded categories may also have the right word arrow to the left of that signifying that they contain additional terms or categories themselves. And these can be expanded to view. Clicking on any of these will result in the page updating to show the overview of that item, giving you the details regarding the metadata. If a glossary or category is clicked on that has sub items represented by the right word arrow.

## 01:00 — Filtering searching and collapsing the hierarchy tree

The page will update with the overview along with expanding the hierarchy tree one level. If you want to navigate inside only a single glossary clicking on the all glossary dropdown allows you to select a specific glossary to visualize in the hierarchy, limiting the display to only categories in terms contained in that specific glossary. If there is a specific item that you're looking for in the glossary, the search bar above the hierarchy tree may be used to enter a value to match against the name of the glossary category term or term alias.

Finally, if you've expanded out the glossary many levels and are looking to return to its original top level display. Clicking on the collapse. All icon will update the hierarchy to the top level without having to refresh the page or update the page.