Celonis Product Documentation

From the Celonis navigation bar, select Data > Objects and Events.

Select Objects or Events in the top navigation bar.

Click the Create button on the list of objects or events. For an object type, you can choose either Model from scratch to create the object type by hand, or Import from table to base the object type on a table in your source system data. Event types have to be modeled from scratch.

If you’re creating an object type from a table, select the connected data source where the table is (which needs to be available through a data connection in this data pool), and the table name, and select Import.

Choose a name for the object type or event type.

For an imported object type, we’ll apply these rules to the table name to create the suggested object name. If the table name starts with a number, or if it already exists, we’ll flag this so you know you need to change it.

Add tags that apply to the object type or event type, and add a description if you want to. You can use the existing Celonis process tags, or create your own tags in the "Custom processes" category by typing one in and clicking it to create it. Custom tags can be up to 41 characters long (including spaces), and they need to be unique in the "Custom processes" category - note that they aren't case-sensitive. After you've saved the object type or event type, your custom tags can be used for filtering, and can be assigned to other custom object types or event types.

For an imported object type, check and edit the suggested attributes. The ID attribute is provided for you, and can’t be changed.

1. Uncheck any of the columns from the table that you don’t want to have as attributes of the object type. To see a sample of the data in each column, click Preview source table.

   Tip

   You can’t use foreign keys as attributes, but you’ll probably want to create relationships between this object type and the object types represented in those tables. Make a note of them now to help with that.

2. Edit any attribute names that you want to change. We’ve used the column names from the table, with the naming rules applied, as the suggested attribute names.

   Tip

   You can’t change the data type for the attributes - they’re taken from the columns in your table. If the data type for a column isn’t suitable, some extractors let you change it in the extraction configuration. Or you can set up a pre-processing stage by following the instructions in I want to pre-process my raw data before transforming it into objects and events.

3. Click Add attribute to add any further attributes you want in the object type, which you'll be populating with data from outside your selected table. Name them and select a data type for them.

4. Confirm that you’ve got all the attributes you want. You can use the Hide unselected toggle to remove the table columns you aren’t using from the preview, and you can sort the attributes.

5. When you’re finished, click Create to create the object type. If you want to generate the transformation script for the attributes now, click Generate transformation in the confirmation pop-up. You’ll still need to edit it to assemble the ID and populate any added attributes, but we recommend you do generate the script as it should save you a lot of time. There won’t be an opportunity later to do it.

If you’re modeling the object type or event type from scratch, add the attributes manually. The ID attribute for an object type or event type, and the timestamp attribute for event types, are already provided for you and can’t be changed.

1. Click Add to add a new attribute.

2. Give the attribute a name. You can’t use spaces or special characters.

3. Select the data type for the attribute from the Data type dropdown. The available data types are String, Boolean, Datetime, Integer, and Floating Point.

   Tip

   Event logs can now break down event types into subsets using their attributes. For example, you could analyze each specific delivery method for the ReleaseDelivery event separately. Instead of creating lots of similar event types, you can create a single event type and use attributes to subset it for analysis. Modeling objects and events explains more about this.

Click Save to create the new object type or event type.

To create more custom object types or event types like this one, click the context menu (the three vertical dots) next to its name, and select the Duplicate option. (Object types and event types from the Celonis catalog don’t have this option because you can’t duplicate them.) Type in a new name, and click Duplicate to confirm. The duplicate object type or event type has all the attributes of the original and all the tags that were assigned to it, and you can edit it as you want. We don't duplicate any of its relationships.

If you need to make any changes to your custom object type or event type, click it in the list to bring up its details again, and make your edits. If you need to rename it, click the context menu (the three vertical dots) next to its name, and select the Rename option.

If you need to delete a custom object type or event type, in the list, click the context menu (the three vertical dots) next to its name, and select Delete.

When you’ve added at least some of the object types and event types you want, start adding their relationships.  For an imported object type, consider creating relationships with each object that has a foreign key in the source system table.

1. For event types, you can add event to object relationships by selecting Related objects.

2. For object types, you can add event to object relationships by selecting Related events.

3. For object types, you can add object to object relationships by selecting Relationships to objects.

4. In the search box, start typing all or part of the name of the object type or event type that you want to link, and pick it from the list. If you’re working in the event type, this will be the object type, and if you’re working in the object type, this will be the event type.

To add event to object relationships:

1. Click Add to add a new event to object relationship.

2. Choose whether the event involves one of the objects, or many of the objects.

3. In the Description field, add a descriptive name for the event to object relationship. Use words that explain the role of the object in the event and how it is involved (for example, “Approver”).

4. Click Save to create the relationship.

To add object to object relationships:

1. Click Add to add a new object to object relationship.

2. In the search box, start typing all or part of the name of the object type that you want to link to this object, and pick the object type from the list.

3. Use the Cardinality dropdown to say whether this relationship is many to one (m:1), one to many (1:m), many to many (m:n) with the relationship table as a join table on the source object, or many to many (m:n) with a join table on the target object.

   Tip

   The object-centric data model doesn't enforce uniqueness of a foreign key, which is why one to one relationships aren't available as a choice now.

4. By default, we'll create the incoming relationship from the other object as well, to make a bidirectional relationship. If you want the relationship to be unidirectional, where the first object type has a record of the relationship but the second object type involved in it doesn’t, click the trash can icon to delete the incoming relationship.

5. Give each side of the relationship a name. We’ve prefilled this with the name of the related object, but you can change this if you want. You can't use spaces or special characters. Upper and lower case letters and numbers are allowed. There's a length limit of 41 characters.

Verify the relationships for the object types and event types you’ve created, especially the object to object relationships. You can view all the outgoing and incoming relationships for an object type by selecting Relationships to objects.

When you’ve finished creating object types, event types, and their relationships, select Publish > Publish to development to synchronize your changes to the development environment.