They are treated as values in a column, but only within a record. If it is an attribute built into a record, it cannot be referenced outside of the record like in a KPI. You can go KPI -> Record but not the other way around.

@matt.witty13 , I don't think that's the case. I have several KPIs where I use custom attributes.

Also, the error message is not about the attribute missing, but the KPI referenced in the attribute.

When I use the custom attribute, the PQL editor usually complains about the column not found but the calculation still works. I would try using the official format with " quotes.

Also, maybe adding some calculation / aggregation you want to perform.

This is from the training environment, so it doesn't have any business meaning, just to show that it works:

This is a custom attribute resulting in a number:

The KPI referencing the custom attribute (the ID has to be manually copied over as for whatever reason, the custom attributes cannot be referenced when creating a KPI in the KM):

The PQL editor complains about the missing column but the calculation works:

But this is a very simple scenario, the custom attribute doesn't rely on other KPIs.

The training environment might be a different version of EMS or a different version knowledge model, so I wouldn't go by that. I just tried to do that in my own environment and it could not find the record I was trying to reference.

What I meant was you can't go into KPI in the knowledge model and reference an attribute in a record. You can reference augmented attributes. But I can't take a custom attribute into the KPI section of a knowledge model and reference it there. Unless that's an update we need to our environment, but I don't think that's the case.

I've always created a KPI and then used that as the attribute.

Like this. So that I can reference it outside the record