Table of contents
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:
| 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:
- 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 - Ņonverts 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:
- 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
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.
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.
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:
Identifiers in PIM
Each entity record in has a unique ID, which is set automatically when a new record is created. PIM uses UUID v7 identifiers, which we convert to ULIDs.
This type of identifiers allows sorting. This means that the records that were created most recently will be at the top of the table by default.
When creating a record from the user interface, you cannot set your own IDs, but it is possible when creating records by import.