Assets
What is an Asset?
An Asset represents a real, identifiable thing in your ecosystem — an application, a report, an agent, a database, or any other system or component that either sends, receives, transforms, or holds data. If it has its own identity and can be a starting point or an endpoint of a connection, it's an Asset.
Examples of Assets include applications (Synergi, SalesForce, OneTrust), reports (Power BI), AI agents, and data stores (A Data Lake). Each Asset is a distinct node in your network — something you could point to and say "that's a real system or deliverable," as opposed to the technical machinery that moves data between them.
Why this matters:
Assets are the nodes in your network diagram — the "who" and "where" of your ecosystem. Every connection (Link) in the network runs between two Assets, describing a real relationship: one Asset sending data to another, one Asset reading from another, and so on. Without Assets clearly defined, there's nothing for the Links, Components, or Datasets to actually connect.
In short:
An Asset answers "what system, application, or deliverable is this?" — while a Link answers "how are two Assets connected?", a Component answers "what technical mechanism made that connection happen?", and a Dataset answers "what data is actually flowing through that connection?"
An Asset represents a real, identifiable thing in your ecosystem — an application, a report, an agent, a database, or any other system or component that either sends, receives, transforms, or holds data. If it has its own identity and can be a starting point or an endpoint of a connection, it's an Asset.
Examples of Assets include applications (Synergi, SalesForce, OneTrust), reports (Power BI), AI agents, and data stores (A Data Lake). Each Asset is a distinct node in your network — something you could point to and say "that's a real system or deliverable," as opposed to the technical machinery that moves data between them.
Why this matters:
Assets are the nodes in your network diagram — the "who" and "where" of your ecosystem. Every connection (Link) in the network runs between two Assets, describing a real relationship: one Asset sending data to another, one Asset reading from another, and so on. Without Assets clearly defined, there's nothing for the Links, Components, or Datasets to actually connect.
In short:
An Asset answers "what system, application, or deliverable is this?" — while a Link answers "how are two Assets connected?", a Component answers "what technical mechanism made that connection happen?", and a Dataset answers "what data is actually flowing through that connection?"