Create a Custom Data Element

Custom data elements let you detect organization-specific identifiers and other sensitive values directly from the Teleskope UI.

Create an element

1. Go to Settings > Elements and Categories > Data elements, then select Create custom element.

2. In Details:

   • Enter a display name. Teleskope generates the internal label and custom.<label> URI.

   • Select at least one data category and a sensitivity level.

3. In Detection:

   • Add one or more RE2 regular expression patterns.

   • Leave Requires context on when a pattern should match only with a related keyword. Turn it off only when the pattern is specific enough to classify on its own.

   • Choose whether to scan all data types or structured data only.

   • Avoid ^ and $ anchors. Scanned content usually contains surrounding text, so patterns anchored to the entire input rarely match. Use boundaries such as \b or explicit delimiters instead.

4. In Context, add keywords that typically appear near the value. Enable Case-insensitive matching if capitalization should not matter.

5. In Test, paste sample text and select Preview classifications. Review the highlighted matches, match count, and context status, then refine the patterns or keywords as needed.

6. Select Create, review the confirmation, and select Confirm create.

If every pattern requires context, add at least one keyword. Those patterns will not classify without a matching keyword.

After you save, Teleskope reloads the scanner rules so the element can be used by subsequent scans.

Example

To detect a four-digit employee badge number only when the word badge is nearby:

• Display name: Employee Badge

• Pattern: \b\d{4}\b

• Requires context: On

• Keyword: badge

• Sample text: Employee badge 4821 was issued today.

The preview highlights 4821 and confirms that the context keyword was found.