Fundamentals of a View

The View asset is what you use to build the visual representation (i.e., front end) of your App that business users work and interact with. In this course, you will discover how Knowledge Models and Views are connected, and explore the View’s layout and features that help you efficiently build dashboards. Additionally, you’ll learn to navigate the PQL Editor to efficiently add and configure data for your components.

This course should take you about 50 minutes to finish.

This course is part of the Build Views Training Track.

As a prerequisite, you should already know how to navigate the Celonis Studio and create a View. If you’re unsure, consider going through the Introduction to Celonis Studio course.

Move to the next page to get a quick recap on how to go about creating the View asset.

You can Hide the Menu bar (at the top left). Since the View and its related assets are in active development, you may observe differences between your training environment, the View training courses, and even, your productive environment. The learning content should remain fully applicable. Should you encounter any issues, please reach out via the Academy contact form below!

This content is available in multiple languages: English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese. To switch your language, use the selector in the top navigation bar.

In Courses: Switching languages will not affect your progress. If you are multilingual, comparing languages can even help deepen your understanding. In Exams: Do not switch the language once you start the exam. If you switch the language when you're already reviewing questions and answers, the page will refresh, causing your exam attempt to end prematurely. (Note: Once inside the exam course, you can switch the language anytime before clicking the Start Exam button.)

If you encounter any technical or access issues during this course, check out our FAQs in the Support area or reach out to us via our Academy contact form.

If you are already familiar with navigating Studio and creating a View asset, feel free to move on to the next page.

Not familiar with how to navigate Studio to create a View? Check out the following video!

1:33

Excited? We know we are!

But before you proceed with building a View, let’s first understand what makes up a typical dashboard.

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A View consists of different components to build a dashboard or analysis. The components you add and how you configure them determine the look and feel of the dashboard / app.

The following is an example of a dashboard created using a View. Have a look at some of the components that are typically used.

Process Explorer KPI List Chart Table Filters

This Sales Order Details dashboard in an Order Management App provides a breakdown of the sales order process, creation timeline, and net order value details.

In the example, you can see that the components visualize and aggregate the data from the Knowledge Model. These aggregated data can live locally in the View or reference centrally stored entities from the Knowledge Model.

If you came from the Introduction to Celonis Studio course, you can skip to Step 3.

Before you move on, you’ll need to set up your training environment for the hands-on exercises throughout the course. Using a separate tab (in your browser), go through the following steps to set your training team up...

Step 1: Join or login to the central training team

Access to Central Training Environment Required

This course contains hands-on exercises that require access to this central Celonis training environment.

Not sure if you have access? Click below and we'll either add you to the environment or show you how to access it. Please make sure to disable adblockers on this page if the button is not working for you.

Add me or check my access

Step 2: Create a Space

Go to Studio and create a Space using the following details:

Space Icon: Briefcase

Space Name: Academy Training

Suggested Data Model: ocpm_ordermanagement

Step 3: Create a Package

Create a new Package using the following details:

Package name: Build Dashboards: The Basics

Description: The package was created to house all content related to the “Build Dashboards: The Basics” milestone in the “Build Views” Training Track.

Initial content: View

Data Model: ocpm_ordermanagement

If you encounter any issues, contact us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

After you’ve completed the last step, you should end up in a (new and empty) View.

Since the View is made up of many components, it is crucial for you to understand what each component does and how they function.

The components of a View are divided by its categories, so its easy for you to select the ones you need.

You could also simply search for the specific components at the top.

Each component has its own settings that you'd need to configure. All component settings have a similar workflow - from adding the relevant data to their specific customization options (e.g., interaction and style settings).

In this course, we're focusing on the basics of the View architecture. In later courses of the Build Views training track, you’ll dive deeper into understanding the use and configuring the commonly-used components!

Let's now visualize a single KPI. Let's say you have a business user who wants to see the total number of customers they have and what their geographical reach is.

To that end, add a KPI List and configure 2 KPIs to it using the following guiding information:

KPI 1

PQL Query: COUNT ( "o_celonis_Customer"."Id" )

Name: # Customers

Format: Rounded Number (#,###)

KPI 2

PQL Query: COUNT ( DISTINCT "o_celonis_Customer"."Country" )

Name: # Countries

Format: Rounded Number (#,###)

-> Save to Knowledge Model

Description: The number of countries the customers are located in.

Take your time to explore the PQL Editor and KPI List component!

This is how you could do it...

The video has no sound.

And just like that, you've created your first 'knowledge entity'! When you create other components, you can re-use this metric in the PQL Editor (via the knowledge sidebar).

Some additional configurations of certain components tend to only be available when they're knowledge entities.

When you select the data settings, you can see that the knowledge entity has many more configuration options. You can learn more about them in the KPI List documentation.

Apart from specific data-level configurations, take note that within the component settings also lies the general component-level settings that can help with the design of your dashboards.

Component Information Menu option

You don’t need to configure everything in a component. Generally speaking, if it fulfills your business users’ needs and they like the way it looks - then it’s done! Each component has its own set of behaviors and settings so you’ll have to play around and discover the unique settings as you build them. The specific component settings in the product documentation would be useful in this regard.

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The View has been designed with an intuitive experience in mind. Here are a few more layout settings and features you might not yet have encountered. You might find them useful down the line.

Do you know where to find them in the View UI? Feel free to skip the features you already know about.

Undo and redo Rename the View Interactive Mode Add tabs Paste copied component Save Additional settings

What is YAML and why does it have an editor?

YAML originally stood for "Yet Another Markup Language," but it was later humorously redefined as "YAML Ain't Markup Language" to emphasize its focus on data rather than markup. It is a human-readable data serialization language that is commonly used for configuration files that need to be easily read and written by both humans and machines.

The configurations of both Views and Knowledge Models are built upon YAML. You can access the core of what you have built in them via the YAML Editor. Think of YAML as the barebones of the assets. Technically, what you’ve been using to configure the View all this while is called the Visual Editor. Yes, everything is a lie.

Generally, we recommend using the Visual Editor exclusively. While code-savvy users may find using the Code Editor speeding up certain tasks on rare occasions, there’s no need to learn YAML — as we are committed to providing all features and capabilities through Visual Editor.

Many of the View features and settings have hotkeys so that you can easily build and configure your View. To find out if a feature you use often has one, try hovering on the buttons to find out and read their descriptions!

Enjoy that nut, my friend. You deserve it.

You should now be able to:

Conceptualize the relationship between the Knowledge Model and View Describe how data flows from the Data Model to the View Navigate the PQL Editor Create a KPI List component in a View Copy, paste, duplicate, and delete components in a View Change the Knowledge Model of a View and a component Conceptualize the View layout and features Undo and redo configurations in a View Go into Interactive Mode in a View Add new tabs in a View Change the layout mode of a View

In further View-building training, you will learn how to gradually build the different types of components independently using everything that you've learnt in this course!

In practice, be sure to utilize the documentation if you need help building a View. We also invite you to the Celonis community where you can connect, ask, or answer questions from other users who are also learning to build Apps around the globe.

Lastly, we'd also appreciate it if you could take a moment to fill out the feedback form on the next page. Are there any questions about Views that have been left unanswered? Is there anything that can be done to make the course better for you? It really helps us to know what you find useful, unnecessary, and/or what the course lacks.

Thank you for taking this course & we hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

Your Celonis Academy

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