Entities let you group data for a business object in one container with a unique identifier. For example, an employee entity can have a unique Employee ID to store name, address, telephone numbers, salary, account number and other such employee information.

You can store the information related to an entity as attributes. Entity attributes are fields that define entity properties. An entity must have a minimum of one key attribute. For example, an Employee entity can have Employee ID, Name, Address, Phone number and Date of Birth as attributes where the employee ID is the unique identifier field, and name and date of birth are other key fields.

When you configure external calls with actions such as DB Query, mapping the attributes to relevant fields helps you to trigger the relevant action in the external database for an entity instance action.

Use an entity as you would a template or blueprint for various types of objects used in a business process. You can use entities as input to processes, and store entities as output from processes. You can also use entities in a form.

When you import or export a process or a form, the entities used are also imported or exported.

This section describes the following:

• Create an entity

• Use entities in a map

• Use entities in a form

• Link entities within entities