Creating an Entity

This section describes how to create an entity type definition from your business data.

1. Click the Entities link in the heading of the Application Builder administration tool, and then click Create entity.
2. Enter an ID for the entity type.
   Note: This ID is used in the application URLs for the entity pages. If you do not configure display names in the Entity Display Options, the ID is used to create display names. For example, if the entity type ID is literary_agent, the display name will be Literary Agents or Literary Agent, depending on where the display name is used. For example, the plural display name is used by default as the title of the table widget on an entity list page.
3. Select the data source where your entity information is stored. You can connect to the following types of data stores: Collections, Federated, Cluster Collections, and Directory. See Entity Data Connection Options for information about how to configure these data options.
   Important: Each individual result that is returned by your data store can reference only one entity type. Multiple entity types that reference the same result is not supported.
4. After selecting your data store, click Create to continue the entity type creation.
5. At this point you have an entity type defined. However, there are additional steps that you will need to perform in order for your data to become useful. First, you might want to filter your entity type. For example, if you are creating a products entity type and your data store contained results that included both products and parts, you would want to filter the results to return only the products. This functionality is achieved by adding one or more filters. To add a filter, perform the following steps:
   1. Add a row to the Filters table.
   2. From the Field name column, enter or choose a field that is fast indexed to filter the results by.
      Note: Only fields that are fast indexed can be used as filters. See Fast-Indexing in the Watson Explorer Engine documentation for more information about how to fast index fields.
   3. In the Field value field, enter a value to filter this field by. Only fields that contain this exact value will be returned as instances of this entity type.
   4. Add multiple filters to refine the results further.
   Note: If you save the entity type after each filter has been added, the Preview results panel will be updated to show only those entities that match the filter.
6. At this point you are ready to set the general entity type configuration. Select the appropriate options for the entity type that you are creating. See Entity Configuration Options for details about each of these options.
7. Once your entity type has been configured, you can either proceed to edit application pages and define widgets, or create associations to other entity types. It is recommended that you create associations first because they will be useful when defining the information that will be on your application pages. For more information about pages and widgets, see Managing Application Layouts in Application Builder. For information about creating associations and association chains, see Associating Entities,