Entity Basics

Introduction

Entities allows to create linguistic building blocks containing smaller or larger collections of entries to identify values and optionally extract relevant data from the user inputs via Variables; Entities

Available Entities

From a solution, users have access to the following collection of Entities:

Entities located in the solution, and
Entities available in any lexical resource assigned to the solution

Entities located in the solution are under full control of the Teneo Studio user and these can be managed and modified in any way; Entities from a lexical resource (e.g. Teneo Lexical Resources) can be viewed and used in TLML Syntaxes but not modified.

Naming an Entity

When naming Entities, bear in mind that:

the name must be unique within the solution
the name is written in upper-case
Lower cased characters are automatically upper cased by Teneo
the name cannot contain any reserved characters
Any special characters or blank spaces are automatically converted into underscore by Teneo

If an Entity in the solution shares its name with an Entity in an assigned lexical resource, the Entity located in the solution is always chosen by Engine over the Entity in the assigned lexical resource.

Entries editor

An entry is one row in the table view (or Entries editor) and the entry value can consist of plain text or a reference to either a single Language Object or a single Entity. Each entry value can have zero, one or more variables attached in the following columns. The entry value needs to be unique within the Entity and Teneo Studio will prevent the user from saving the Entity if two entry values are the same.

To use an Entity as an entry or in the Syntax editor, its name must be preceded by the percentage sign (%) and written in capitalized letters; Teneo Studio will automatically capitalize letters written after the percentage sign.

Note that the Longest Match option (:L) is implicitly applied to the Entity.

Open

To open an Entity in read only mode, either:

Double-click the wanted Entity in the Solution Explorer view
Select the Entity and click Open in the top menu
Right-click the Entity and select Open in the context menu

Activate edit in the opened Entity by clicking Edit in the top ribbon of the Entity

To open an Entity in edit mode, either:

Press the Alt key while double-clicking the wanted Entity in the Solution Explorer view
Select the Entity and click Edit in the top ribbon
Right-click the Entity and select Edit in the context menu

Open a referenced Language Object or Entity from the Entries editor by left-clicking and selecting Open (opens in read-only mode) or Edit (opens in edit-mode).
Open a referenced Entity from the Syntax editor by either double-clicking the name (opens in read-only mode) or by pressing Alt while clicking to open in edit mode.

Note that Language Objects and Entities referenced from an assigned lexical resource always open in read-only mode.

Create

To create a new Entity, simply follow the below steps:

Go to the Solution Explorer in the main Teneo Studio window (Home tab)
Optionally select the folder, or create a new folder, where the Entity should be added
In the top ribbon, click on the Entity button in the New area
the Entity window opens on the Properties tab, add the Name of the Entity Note that the .ENTITY suffix is automatically added to the Name field
Optionally, add a Description
Click the green Play icon, or the back arrow in the top left corner
Enter the Entries and any wanted Variables and Values
Optionally add Examples in the right side panel
Remember to Save to preserve all the modifications.

Need to create several Entities (or Language Objects)? Consider using Bulk Import

Create Entity from the Entity editor

Create a new Entity (or Language Object) from the Entity editor by right-clicking the strikethrough reference to the new document and select Create Entity or Create Language Object in the context menu

Bulk data creation

Data can be added to an Entity in bulk by dragging/dropping or copying/pasting content from external files. The data can be single piece of text (no TABs and a maximum of one trailing carriage-return) which when pasting will enter the text in all the selected cells, or an array of data with 1-n rows and 1-n columns. Pasting or drag-dropping will create new entries.

Please note:

Rows are carriage-return separated
Columns are TAB separated
Variable columns are only created if they are needed when using drag/drop or copy/paste
When creating new variable columns, the user can decide if first row in the pasted data should be header, i.e. variable names or just data
If the Entity already has enough variables defined, then no variable columns are created
Variable columns created when using drag/drop or copy/paste defaults to the type string
If one or more of the variables to be pasted should be of the type scripts, to avoid them becoming string types when pasted (and thus resulting in quoted scripts if the type is changed), rather:
- Copy and paste the header, i.e. the variable names only, this will just create the variable columns
  - Remember to include an empty entry column in the one-row of data to copy
  - Change the type of the variables that are to be script types
  - Now, copy and paste the entries data.
When using Ctrl + c on more than one row, the Ctrl + v shortcut will paste into the first column as entries
When using Ctrl + c on one field and marking several rows, doing Ctrl + v will paste to several rows the same content.

Edit

After opening the Entity in edit mode, the user is able to work on the Entity below please find an overview of the available options.

Entity: top ribbon (Home tab)

The Entity top ribbon provides a range of buttons and options for working with the Entity, in the below table the different buttons are listed and - when relevant - links to more information provided.

Section	Button	Comment	More info
Entity	Close	Close the Entity window
	Save	Save the Entity in the current state; clicking the lower part of the button allows the user to save the Entity with or without a comment
	Enable/disable	Enable or disable the Entity	Enable or Disable documents
Edit	Undo/Redo	Undo/redo changes performed in the Entity
Entries	Add Entry	Adds new entry line to the Entity
	Delete	Deletes the selected entry line
	Generate	Only available when LLM Settings are defined for the Account Generate entries automatically with help from Large Language Models	Generate Entries
Variables	Add Variable	Adds a new variable
	Delete	Deletes the selected variable
	String/Script	Select if the variable should be of type string or script
Stable Version	Set/Unset	Set the current version of the Entity as stable or unset it	Version flag
Branching	Include/Exclude	Include or Exclude the Entity from branching when working in a Localization setup	Localization setup

Entity tab

The backstage of an Entity (Entity tab in the top of the Entity window) contains the below mentioned menu items.

Menu item	Comment	More information
Properties	Allows to edit the name of the Entity, add a description or view the Id and location
History	Lists the history of versions created each time the Entity was saved, comments added at save are displayed hereOpen a previous version by clicking the version number; restore a previous version by opening a specific version and clicking Restore in the top ribbon	Version history

Save

To save an Entity with a comment follow the below steps:

Click Save in the top ribbon of the Entity
In the dialogue box (optionally) write a comment
Click OK

To save directly and bypass the comment, press the Alt key while clicking the Save button.

Close

To close an Entity, either:

Click the X in the top, right corner of the Entity window
Click the Close button available in the top ribbon
In the Entity backstage, click Close in the left-side menu

Should there be unsaved changes, Teneo Studio prompts the user to Save or Close without saving.

Delete

To delete a Entity from the solution, follow the below steps:

Select the Entity in the Solution Explorer
In the top ribbon of Teneo Studio, click Delete
A confirmation message will be displayed, click Delete again If the Entity is in use, an Item in Use message will appear, click Select All to delete anyhow or Continue to cancel deletion (the user can also click the X in the box to cancel the deletion).

For more information, please see Delete documents.