To add a Tomcat entity not only in the catalog, but in the Quick Launch as well, the entity must be tagged with catalog_quick_launch. This allows admins to curate what appears in the quick launch bar on the home page. More tags can be added for the same entity, for other purposes.
brooklyn.catalog: items: - id: tomcat-server version: "1.0.0" itemType: entity tags: [ catalog_quick_launch ] item: type: org.apache.brooklyn.entity.webapp.tomcat.Tomcat8Server brooklyn.config: webapp.enabledProtocols: https httpsSsl: url: classpath://org/apache/brooklyn/entity/webapp/sample-java-keystore.jks alias: myname password: mypass