Custom Columns

Custom Columns let you enrich your cloud asset inventory with metadata from any source, like ownership, cost, security scores, lifecycle tags, and more, alongside your native cloud resource data.

CloudQuery’s Custom Columns feature allows you to define new columns on any asset table and populate them via:

• SQL expressions (e.g., extracting tags or fields)

• External systems (e.g., FinOps tools, CMDBs) via API

Once added, these columns become:

• Filterable in the UI

• Searchable via SQL

• Queryable in reports and dashboards

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Creating a Custom Column

You can create a Custom Column via the UI:

1. Navigate to: Settings → Custom Columns

2. Click: Add Column

3. Fill in:

   • Label: UI display name (e.g., “Team”)

   • Name: Backend ID (snake_case)

   • Description (optional): Purpose of the column

   • Enrichment Type:

     • From existing field → Use a SQL expression

     • From external source → Populate via API

   • Value Expression: SQL to extract or transform the value (e.g., tags['team'])

Once saved, the column appears in the asset inventory and can be filtered/searched just like native fields.

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Supported SQL Expressions

You can use any valid ClickHouse SQL expression when the value type is expression. Here are some common examples:

Tag Extraction

tags['team']
tags['cost_center']

JSON Parsing

JSONExtractString(tags['metadata'], 'department')
JSONExtract(tags['finance'], 'budget', 'Float64')

Normalization / Cleanup

lower(tags['env'])  -- normalize prod, Prod, PROD
multiIf(
  tags['env'] = 'production', 'prod',
  tags['env'] = 'staging', 'stage',
  tags['env']
)

Conditional Defaults

if(isNull(tags['team']), 'unknown', tags['team'])

Lifecycle Metadata

parseDateTimeBestEffort(tags['deletion_date'])
toDate(now() + INTERVAL 30 DAY)

Example Use Cases

Column	Type	Expression / Source	Description
team	String	tags['team']	Surface team ownership
normalized_env	String	lower(tags['env'])	Normalize inconsistent tag values
scheduled_delete	Date	parseDateTimeBestEffort(tags['deletion'])	Track lifecycle cleanup dates
monthly_cost	Float	External (FinOps)	Cost enrichment from billing system
security_score	Float	External (Scanner)	Composite score from vuln scanners
remediation_owner	String	External (CMDB)	Internal owner for misconfigured assets

Query Examples

SELECT name, monthly_cost
FROM aws_ec2_instances
WHERE monthly_cost > 100
ORDER BY monthly_cost DESC

SELECT name, normalized_env
FROM aws_ec2_instances
WHERE normalized_env = 'prod'