Glossary

The Novantra documentation uses recurring terms across modules. This page defines them once, in customer-facing language, and points at the deep-dive page when one exists.

Entries are alphabetical. Names that compose (for example “responsibility assignment”) appear under their head noun.

A

Acquisition method — How an imported record came into the workspace: install (part of a catalogue package), import (standalone), or copy (local-to-local with provenance preserved). Recorded on every catalog lineage entry.

Action policy — A configuration that controls what an AI agent or automation can do unattended: suggest-only, requires-approval, autonomous within constraints, or blocked. Defined in Action Policies.

Actioner — A named operation an automation can invoke (create finding, open lifecycle instance, send notification, etc.). Actioners are owned by the governance module they affect; automations call them, they do not contain free-form code. See Automation → Actions.

Assignment (training) — A training course assigned to a party, with the actor, reason, and completion state. Recipients are always parties, never members directly. See Training.

Assurance engagement — A planned exercise (internal audit, external audit, certification body visit, management review) that tests controls and produces workpapers, observations, and findings. See Assurance.

Audit log — The time-ordered record of who did what in the workspace. The authoritative source for activity questions. See Audit log.

Audit package — A bundle of governance records assembled for delivery to a specific audience (regulator, certification body, internal committee) with snapshot fidelity to the as-of date. See Audit Packages.

B

Blind index — A non-reversible derivative of an encrypted field that allows exact-match lookup without decrypting the field. Used internally for things like party email lookup; not user-visible.

C

Catalog lineage — The provenance entry on a record that arrived from an upstream catalogue: source provider, template id and version, install date, status (active / superseded / detached). See Catalog lineage.

Catalog package installation — The parent record above the lineage entries created when a published catalogue package is installed into an organization. See Catalog lineage.

Change request — A governed proposal to change a system, configuration, or process, with approval and post-implementation verification. See Change Management.

Classification — A sensitivity level your organization defines for data, applied to records and forms. See Classification.

Cloud — Novantra’s hosted deployment. Novantra runs the install; customers manage their organization.

Compensating control — An alternative control accepted when the primary control cannot be implemented as written. Recorded as an exception of kind compensating-control.

Control — A documented requirement an organization commits to meet, with attached evidence and an evaluation status. See Controls.

Coverage link — A link between a control (or evidence claim) and the framework requirement it covers. Lets one local control discharge many framework requirements. See Frameworks.

Cross-organization governance — The model in a Sovereign install where one headquarters organization governs many subsidiary organizations. See Cross-organization governance.

D

Detached — A catalog lineage status indicating the link to the upstream source was deliberately broken; the local record stays, but no upstream updates are accepted. Detaching requires a reason.

Document Intelligence — The AI feature for extracting structured data from uploaded documents (leases, certificates, invoices, regulatory notices). See Document Intelligence.

Due diligence review — A governed assessment of an external party (typically before engagement or on a recurring cycle) producing a pass/fail or risk-rated outcome. See Party Engagements.

Duty — A named responsibility (e.g., “Approve refund > $500”, “Sign off on quarterly attestation”) that can be assigned to a member or role. See Responsibilities.

E

Eligibility rule — A declarative condition that gates a lifecycle transition. Example: “Cannot transition to active until KYC review is approved.” See Eligibility.

Engagement (party) — A governed relationship with an external party (vendor, customer, outsourcer, applicant). See Party Engagements.

Entitlement (access) — A grant that a specific principal has a specific permission on a specific resource, captured for review even when the runtime enforcement lives elsewhere. See Access.

Entitlement (feature) — Whether a feature is licensed and enabled for an organization. Governs whether nav entries appear and routes accept calls.

Evaluation model — The scale used to express compliance state for controls, risks, and similar records. Customer-defined; Novantra does not impose one. See Evaluation Models.

Evidence claim — A specific piece of evidence (file, attestation, system snapshot) submitted to support a control or finding. Has a validity window and a status. See Evidence.

Evidence requirement — What evidence is needed to support a control, framework requirement, or assessment. Distinct from the claim that fulfills it. See Evidence.

Exception — A governed acceptance that a control or requirement is not being met, with an owner, expiry date, and approval. Kinds include waiver, deviation, compensating-control, customized-approach, temporary-exception, risk-based-acceptance. See Exceptions.

F

Finding — A documented gap, weakness, or non-conformity discovered through assessment, monitoring, automation, or external report. See Findings.

Form template — A reusable, versioned form definition (questionnaire, intake, attestation). Templates produce instances; templates are versioned so historical instances stay bound to the version they were filled in. See Forms.

Framework — A body of requirements an organization operates under (regulation, standard, internal policy book, contractual obligation). Customer-registered. See Frameworks.

Framework Catalog — A roadmap feature that would ship pre-populated framework packs (ISO 27001, NIST, SOC 2, NCA, etc.) ready to install. Not part of today’s product; you register the frameworks your organization actually uses, with the requirements that matter to you.

G

Governance Copilot — The in-product AI assistant for governance work, with configurable profiles and an audit trail. See Governance Copilot.

Governance trace — The cross-cutting layer that surfaces relationships between governed records as a graph. See Trace graph.

Governed automation — Cross-module orchestration that reacts to triggers, evaluates conditions, and invokes named actioners with the same audit and approval guarantees as manual work. See Automation.

Guest session — A time-bounded session granted to an external party for completing a specific task, delivered as a session link rather than an account login. See Public Sessions. (The same mechanism is sometimes called “public session” in the docs; they refer to the same feature.)

H

Headquarters organization — In a Sovereign install with cross-org governance, the organization that publishes policy and templates to subsidiaries. See Cross-organization governance.

I

Idempotency key — A client-supplied header on write requests that lets you safely retry a request without creating duplicate effects. See Errors.

Indicator — A measured signal (KPI, KRI, KCI, KQI, maturity score) with targets and thresholds, fed from monitors, assessments, modules, formulas, or manual entry. See Indicators.

Install — One Sovereign deployment of Novantra. An install can host many organizations.

L

Legal hold — A non-discretionary suspension of disposal for records related to litigation, investigation, or regulatory inquiry. Overrides retention rules until released. See Retention.

Lifecycle (party) — A defined sequence of states a party moves through (e.g., prospect → applicant → active → archived), with transitions that can carry gates, forms, responsibilities, review-approvals, and bound actions. See Lifecycles.

M

Member — An authenticated person in an organization, with a role and permissions. Distinct from a party, which is the business subject. See Members & invitations.

Methodology snapshot — The version of an assessment or risk methodology captured at the time a record was created, so the record remains interpretable even when the methodology evolves.

Monitor — A continuous check (manual cadence, automated query, integration callback) that produces pass/fail signals over time, feeding control compliance and indicators. See Monitoring.

O

Organization — A workspace boundary. An install hosts one or more organizations; users belong to one organization at a time.

P

Party — A business subject your organization governs (employee, contractor, vendor, customer, applicant, beneficiary). Distinct from a member, which is an authenticated account. A member typically represents a party. See Party Governance.

Party type — A user-defined category for parties (e.g., “Full-time staff”, “Locum partner”, “Tier-1 supplier”). Not an enum; you create the types you need. See Party Types.

Patch requirement — A record stating that a particular vulnerability or batch of vulnerabilities must be remediated within an SLA, with optional exceptions. See Vulnerability Management.

Privileged access record — An entitlement of elevated rights (root, super-admin, break-glass) captured for review and audit, independent of where the runtime grant lives. See Access.

Public session — See guest session. The two terms are interchangeable.

R

Readiness assessment — A governed evaluation of an asset’s fitness for its intended use (calibration, certification, condition). See Assets.

Reason for change — A short free-text justification required on most write operations, captured in the audit log alongside the change. Customer-visible vocabulary; required by API mutations.

Recertification — A periodic re-approval of an access entitlement, typically run as a campaign. See Access.

Responsibility — See duty.

Review-approval — A cross-cutting actioner that wraps a decision (lifecycle transition, evidence claim, exception, change request) in a defined routing shape: single, sequential, parallel-any, parallel-all, or quorum. See Review & Approval.

Right-to-audit record — A documented contractual right to audit an external party, tracking the right itself, exercise events, and outcomes. See Party Engagements.

Risk — A documented uncertainty that could affect an objective, with a treatment decision (reduce / accept / avoid / transfer / monitor). See Risks.

Risk candidate — A potential risk under triage, not yet promoted to a registered risk. Provides a queue for raw inputs (incident reports, audit observations, scanner output) that may or may not become risks.

Role — A named bundle of permissions assigned to members. See Roles & Permissions.

S

Scope (governance) — The set of things a governance record applies to: business units, locations, systems, processes. See Scope.

Scope (token) — A permission a service-account API token carries (e.g., governance.controls:read). See Authentication.

Service account — A non-human identity that owns API credentials. One per integration. See Authentication.

Session link — A single-use, time-bounded URL sent to an external party that grants access to a specific guest session without requiring an account. Sometimes called a “magic link” in industry vocabulary; Novantra docs use “session link” because it composes with the public-session concept and reads as audit-grade rather than casual.

Severity — A customer-defined ranking on findings, vulnerabilities, and incidents. The vocabulary is yours; Novantra does not impose a fixed set.

Sovereign — Novantra’s customer-operated deployment. The customer runs the install on their own infrastructure. Contrast with Cloud.

Subsidiary organization — In a Sovereign install with cross-org governance, an organization that receives policy and templates from the headquarters organization.

Submission — A formal package delivered to an external recipient (regulator, certification body, customer, insurer) with the records, evidence, and attestations they require. See Submissions.

Supersede — To replace one record with a newer version while keeping the old one in history (lineage, evidence claims, lifecycle template versions). Distinct from delete.

T

Trace edge — A neutral typed link between two governed records, with a relationship kind and optional snapshot. Aggregated into the trace graph.

Training assignment — See Assignment (training).

Treatment decision — How a registered risk is being handled: reduce, accept, avoid, transfer, or monitor. See Risks.

Trigger (automation) — The event that fires an automation: schedule, governance event, monitor result, indicator threshold, inbound webhook, manual invocation, or others. See Automation → Triggers.

U

Use authorization (AI) — A governed approval that a specific AI system may be used for a specific purpose by a specific team. See Use Authorizations.

V

Verification (finding) — A confirmation that a finding’s remediation actually closed the gap, recorded as part of finding closure. See Findings.

Version (template) — The point-in-time copy of a form, lifecycle, evaluation model, or methodology that a downstream instance was bound to. New template versions do not silently rewrite old instances. Versioning fidelity is a recurring property across the foundation.

Vulnerability — A weakness in a system (CVE, internal finding, configuration weakness, architectural weakness, pen-test finding, disclosed bug) tracked through assessment and remediation. See Vulnerability Management.

W

Workpaper — Evidence collected by an assurance engagement that supports the engagement’s observations and findings. Distinct from a finding (which is the gap) and an observation (which is a note that may or may not become a finding). See Assurance.

Workspace — A single organization in Novantra. The product surface every member sees inside one organization is collectively “the workspace.” See Workspace administration.

See also

• Guides overview — the docs as a whole.
• Governance overview — for the substantive picture of what these terms describe.
• Developers — for terms that appear in the REST API context (scopes, idempotency, webhooks).