Manage entities

AtroCore offers highly flexible, scalable and configurable mechanisms that enable customers to manage and use their data efficiently without being tied to rigid structures. You have the opportunity to create your own data structure on your environment according to your own needs. This is what the Entity Manager is for. It allows you to create and delete new entities (tables) and relationships between them, add fields to entities, and configure entity parameters.

Creating and configuring entities

To create a new entity in AtroCore go to Administration / Entities and click on the button Create entity. The common creation window will open:

Create entity

Field Name Description
Type Type of the entity. Base and Hierarchy types are available for entities
Name Entity name
Label Singular Singular name of the entity that will be displayed in the interface
Label Plural The name of the entity in the plural that will be displayed in the interface
Icon Icon to be displayed before the entity name in the left side menu
Color The color of the icon
Archivable Enable this option to be able to archive entity records (the "Archive" field of the Boolean type is automatically added)
Activable This property allows you to activate and deactivate entity records (the "Active" field of the Boolean type is automatically added)
Delete without confirmation If checked, the individual record is deleted without user confirmation. Deletion of multiple records is still to be confirmed
Relations effecting modification date/time Changes in these relations will cause the update of "Modified At" date and time
Duplicatable Relations Select the relationships that should be duplicated when duplicating an entity
Access Management In this panel, you configure roles to manage access to the entity. The following options are available here: Owner, Assigned User, Teams, Accounts

The entity of the Hierarchy type differs from the Basic one in that it allows you to create child records that will inherit the values of fields and attributes from the parent. An additional Hierarchy Management panel with following fields is available for it:

Hierarchy management

  • Multiple Parents - allows to link multiple parents to one child record
  • Drag & Drop - this option activates hierarchy sort order, so no other sorting is possible in hierarchy navigation
  • Field Value Inheritance - if this checkbox is selected, child records inherit field values from parent records
  • Relation Inheritance - if this checkbox is selected, child records inherit relations from parent records
  • Disable Hierarchy - Ņonverts a hierarchical entity to a basic entity with no record inheritance

After the entity has been created, you will be able to edit most of these fields. Additional fields also appear in the edit mode:

Editing entity

  • Disabled - This option makes the entity unavailable for editing. When it is activated, the entity is available only in view mode
  • Disable Track changes - option allows you to disable change tracking (Stream) for an entity
  • Default Order (field) - a field by which records are sorted in the list view
  • Default Order (direction) - order of sorting
  • Text Filter Fields - fields used by text search
  • Status Field - Updates of this field are logged in stream.

You can also delete the created entity. System entities cannot be deleted. To delete an entity, click on the triangle on the right side of the table and select Delete

Delete entity

Creating Relationships

To add a new relation for your entity go to Administration / Entity and press Relationships. You will see all relations of this entity. Some relationships are generated automatically, you cannot edit or delete them. They are needed for this entity type. To add a new Relationship press Create link.

Create relation

Three types of relations are available in AtroCore:

  • One-to-Many
  • Many-to-One
  • Many-to-Many

When you create a many-to-many relationship between two entities, an entity of type Relation is automatically created in the entity manager. The entity name is formed by combining the names of the two entities that form it. By default, the entity has two fields of the link type, which refer to the related base (or hierarchy) entities, as well as the fields id, created/modify at and created/modify by. The additional module Advanced Data Types provides the ability to edit, configure entities of type Relation and display it as a menu item.

You can change Names and Labels of created relations. Set checkbox Link Multiple Field is you want "Many" relations to be displayed as field on the detail page. Link Multiple field provides a handy way to edit relations. Don't use it if you can have a large number of related records. Link Type and Name can not be edited after creation.

Adding fields to the entity

To add additional fields for the entity go to Administration / Entity and press Fields for your entity. You see all the fields that this entity has. Some fields are generated automatically, you cannot edit or delete them. To add a new field click on Add field and choose the type for your new field.

Add field

In the opened window, enter the name of the field (it cannot be changed after creation), labels in all languages, and other properties. After that, click Save. The new field is added to the entity.

You can display it in the layout on the page Administration / Layouts. Select the desired entity in the list to unfold the list of layouts available for this entity. Click the layout you wish to configure (e.g. List) and enable the created field by its drag-and-drop from the right column to the left:

Layouts