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Create an Entity

Goal​

Create a new entity — a table that stores records — inside one environment, ready to have fields added.

Prerequisites​

  • You are signed in with a maker (or platform administrator) role.
  • You know the target environment.
  • You know the owning publisher's prefix (for example, par). The entity's logical name must start with that prefix.

Steps​

  1. In the left sidebar, choose the environment you are working in and the solution the entity belongs to from the environment and solution pickers. These set your working context for every maker page; the owning publisher's prefix appears beneath them (for example, par_), and every entity in the solution is namespaced by it.
  2. Open Tables from the sidebar navigation.
  3. Enter a display name (for example, Invoice). This is the human-readable, singular label.
  4. Enter a logical name that starts with the solution publisher's prefix followed by an underscore — for example, par_invoice. The logical name must be lower-case, use only letters, digits, and underscores, and stay reasonably short.
  5. Optionally set a plural display name (for example, Invoices). If left blank, the platform derives one from the display name.
  6. Optionally set an icon key (for example, briefcase) from the platform's icon set. The icon appears next to the table in an app's navigation; leave it blank for the default glyph.
  7. Select Create entity.
  8. The new entity appears in the environment's entity list with a single primary name field already created for it. Select the entity's name to manage its fields, forms, and views.

What happens behind the scenes​

The entity is stored as metadata scoped to this environment. A primary name field (a text field used as each record's label) is created automatically, and the data table is built there and then in this environment's isolated data area — the table exists before the screen comes back, ready to hold records. The entity is namespaced by the publisher prefix so entities from different publishers never collide.

Troubleshooting​

  • "… must be lower snake-case and start with the publisher prefix." — the logical name must begin with {prefix}_ and contain only lower-case letters, digits, and underscores.
  • "… is not a valid publisher prefix." — the prefix must be a short lower-case token (a letter followed by up to seven letters or digits).
  • "An entity named … already exists in this environment." — choose a different logical name; entity logical names are unique within an environment.