Product Updates

 What's changingOn 27th October 2024, we will be changing the default timezone of Action Flows scenarios from London Timezone (which is only in Winter on UTC +0) to Reykjavik, which operates on UTC+00 year-round and is unaffected by Daylight Saving Time. Why are we making this changeThis change will make Action Flows scheduling consistent with other services in Celonis Platform running also on UTC + 0. What does it mean for me? On 27th October 2024, the current London time zone will also shift to UTC+0, so you should not expect additional changes. If you have business-critical processes that require adherence to a specific time zone behavior before that date, we want to offer you our support in necessary configuration changes. On 30th March 2025, during the next daylight saving time change, there will be no time shifts for your Action Flows, as they will now be consistently scheduled to UTC +0. If you have business-critical processes that require adherence to specific time zone behavior before 27th October 2024, we ask you to review and make any necessary configuration changes on your end to avoid any unexpected results. Celonis Product team is offering support to you and your Value Engineers to support smooth transitions. Reach out if you need further clarification or assistance with this update.

You can now copy the conformance rate from Process Adherence Manager into your Studio View or use it as a KPI. This allows for better monitoring and reporting of your data. See Exploring deviations.  

Within the PQL editor, the Knowledge sidebar now shows the name of Records and Attributes as maintained in the Knowledge Model instead of their technical names in the Data Model. As a result, users can now centrally manage and maintain display names of the "Data" section in the Knowledge sidebar by editing the names of Records and Attributes. For more information about creating and managing Knowledge Models, see: Knowledge Models. 

Since August, you've been able to choose when to apply a new Celonis catalog update in your team (see August 2024 Release Notes). We've now added an Auto update toggle to the Objects and Events environment so you can choose to automatically upgrade your installed Celonis catalog object types, event types, relationships, transformations, and perspectives whenever a new version is available. Be aware that updates can include Celonis catalog items that you're already using in your object-centric data model, which might get behavior changes or new attributes. Automatic updates are off by default when you enable your first Celonis catalog process. If you decide to enable automatic updates, they'll apply to all Celonis catalog processes. We'll update all your Celonis catalog items whenever a new version is available, and we won't show notification messages about new versions. You can access the Release Notes from the Objects and Events catalog page to see what's changed in each Celonis catalog version. For more on managing Celonis catalog updates, see Updating Celonis object types and event types.

If you’ve enabled object-centric process mining for all the data pools in your Celonis team (see Multiple object-centric data models), the object-centric data and data models in a data pool don’t interact with the case-centric data and data models. We verify when you load a data model that it’s either all object-centric or all case-centric, and we’ve added a warning message that you’ll see if we think the load request is mixing case-centric and object-centric configurations. You shouldn’t see this when you manage your object-centric data models through the Objects and Events user interface as expected.

When you publish transformations for object-centric process mining, we create complete transformations, using your scripts as the core of them, to populate the tables in the Celonis database of objects and events. Previously, we set the data type for any attribute column containing a string to VARCHAR(255). Now, we can set the string length for each attribute column according to what’s in the source data that the transformation is handling - either the specified length for the column, or the database default length for VARCHAR columns. If you set a VARCHAR length in your original transformation script, for example using the CAST or LTRIM functions, we'll continue to use that.Optimizing the VARCHAR length means your transformations won’t fail due to overlength strings, and optimizes the performance of the Celonis database, which is very responsive to changes in string length. However, you should be aware that if the string columns in your source database are always or often set to a length greater than 255 characters, the performance of the Celonis database could potentially deteriorate rather than improve. This feature is currently in Limited Availability and will be released to all teams over the next few weeks. You’ll see the changes becoming effective after publishing in objects and events to change the generated transformations.

We've updated user permissions for Advance Views in Studio, removing the ability for non-admins to edit existing Advance Views. This update enhances security and prevents unauthorized modifications by non-admin usersFor more information about Studio permissions, see: Managing Studio permissions.

You can now create and manage color themes on a global and package level within your Celonis Platform team, allowing you to add your brand colors to your Studio components. This includes selecting primary, secondary, context, and semantic colors using a color selector or by entering a HEX code. You can then use these colors for your chart, table colors, and with a KPI list when configuring your Studio View.For more information about Studio color themes, see: Managing Studio and component color themes.  

You can now extend the perspectives from the Celonis catalog with further objects, events, relationships, and event logs. In the perspectives editor, pick a Celonis perspective from one of our Celonis catalog processes that you've enabled, and choose Extend to create a custom extension for it. Your extension can use custom or Celonis catalog objects, events, and relationships. You can connect objects in your extension to the objects in the Celonis perspective by including or embedding them. Embedding (where you use a copy of the object type) is safer as there's no risk of creating a cycle in the Celonis perspective. You can also connect objects in your extension to other objects in the extension. You can add custom event logs that use objects in your extension as the lead object type. You can also change the default event log for the perspective to be one of these. We'll save your extension separately from the Celonis perspective, so you can view and use the original perspective with or without the extension, and you can create more than one custom extension for the same Celonis perspective. If you've already created a custom perspective to use instead of a Celonis perspective, consider adding your customizations as an extension to the Celonis perspective instead. Celonis perspectives get updated with the latest changes and fixes when you update your Celonis catalog version, so they'll continue to meet the requirements for the Celonis apps and features that use them. Using objects and events for process mining explains how to use perspectives.

With the new Studio experience, you can create and edit tabs within your Views. Published Views with tabs now have distinct URLs per tab, enabling you to directly link to them where needed.In this example, the button component has been configured in tab 1 that links directly to tab 2. The user is then directed to the next tab when clicking the button:  

In the SQL query editor where you create transformations, we've changed the color coding to match the editor used in Data Integration. Operators are now displayed in blue, double-quoted strings and base texts are in black, single-quoted strings are in red, and comments are in green. Also, if you get a validation error, the editor now underlines the section of your SQL where the error is present. For the instructions to write custom transformations, see Creating custom transformations.

You can now create your own tags to organize custom processes that you're modeling for object-centric process mining. When you create a custom object type or event type, you'll get the new "Custom processes" category in the tagging section. Type in a tag and then click it to create it. When you save your work, your tags are added to the Objects and Events user interface, where they can be used for filtering, and can be assigned to other custom object types or event types. You can use custom tags up to 41 characters long (including spaces). Tags need to be unique in the "Custom processes" category - note that they aren't case-sensitive. For the custom modeling instructions, see Creating custom object types and custom event types.

We've built the new version of the object-centric Duplicate Invoice Checker using the latest features in Studio, and you can easily customize the views with the new Studio experience's enhanced user interface. We've upgraded the app content too - here are the highlights: Improved duplicate value tracking Improved group validation flow Customizable group prioritization New filter-capable charts to quickly analyze group distribution across dimensions The object-centric Duplicate Invoice Checker that's built on the new Studio experience is available in the Celonis Marketplace as a new package. You won’t be able to download it as an update to your existing object-centric Duplicate Invoice Checker package - you’ll need to download and install it as a new installation (Installing the object-centric Duplicate Invoice Checker has the steps). The new package has the same name as the old package, as it's a replacement for it, and we won’t be updating the old package built with the legacy Studio components.For updates after version 1.0.0 of the package, we’ll clone the existing versions of your views, and add these to the package navigation along with the new versions of the views. (You can opt out of this by deselecting the “Duplicate copied assets before update” checkbox when you action the update.) Cloning the views means you won't lose the customizations you made to existing views, and you can copy them over to the new version of the views. Alternatively, you can discard any of the new views and revert to your existing versions.

You can add hosted images to your enhanced Studio Views, enabling you to add branding and visual enhancements to your content. You can also customize your image style by choosing the fit, background, alignment, labels, and alt text.When adding images to your Views, the following apply: Source: Images must be available on a public URL, meaning that they can be accessed without credentials or through specific environments. Formats: Images must be either JPEG, PNG, SVG, or GIF format. In this example, we've added the Celonis logo to our Process Cockpit app: For more information about adding images to your enhanced Studio Views, see: Images. 

An object-centric version of our Unshipped Orders app is now available to download from the Celonis Marketplace. The app lets you identify and manage deliveries that are still in your distribution centers waiting to be shipped past the planned delivery date - a situation that causes  unrealized revenue, blocked warehouse spaces, and declining customer satisfaction. For the object-centric version of the app, we’ve added a Value Framing view to help you calculate value opportunities.The object-centric Unshipped Orders app is built using the latest features in Studio, and you can take full advantage of the new Studio experience, including easy drag-and-drop customization of the view components. We’ve added an integrated filter bar, and used Studio’s new Task Management interface to handle the app’s tasks and actions. You can also access and display the history of comments and other updates to tasks by adding the Activity history component to views. For the app documentation, see Unshipped Orders app - object-centric.

You can now write PQL queries that run based on the outcome of one or more data model conditions, such as the data type of a column or the existence of match list elements in comparison operators.Before your query is run, Static PQL dynamically checks some properties of your data model and modifies or cancels your PQL query depending on the outcome of these checks.This lets you define business applications that can be used with a range of different data models, helping drive standardization.For more information, see Static PQL functions.

We've made it easier to identify self-loops in Process Adherence Manager. The arrow indicating a self-loop now displays in the same color as the event log it appears in. Where a self-loop occurs in more than one event log, an arrow displays for each affected event log in the color of that event log.Refining and editing your baseline model is also simplified as you can now add and delete individual self-loops, as well as replacing a self-loop with an event suggested by Process Adherence Manager.For more information about self-loops, see Working with the process model.

Improved visualization of self-loops in Process Adherence Manager (2024-08-27) We've made it easier to identify self-loops in Process Adherence Manager. The arrow indicating a self-loop now displays in the same color as the event log it appears in. Where a self-loop occurs in more than one event log, an arrow displays for each affected event log in the color of that event log. Refining and editing your baseline model is also simplified as you can now add and delete individual self-loops, as well as replacing a self-loop with an event suggested by Process Adherence Manager. For more information about self-loops, see Working with the process model.

Custom authentication method using the extractor builder for Data Integration (2024-08-19) You can now configure a custom authentication method when creating a connection between your source system and the Celonis Platform using the extractor builder. The custom authentication type allows you to configure the authentication method based on your source system. This includes the following configurations:Request (optional): Configure an API request to an authentication endpoint with all details (Request Type, Request URL, Headers, Parameters etc.)Response (optional): Configure the location of an authentication token in the API response.Authentication header: Configure how the response token is used in the authentication header for all endpoint request and add additional headers on top. For more information about the extractor builder, see: Extractor builder. And for an overview of authentication methods, see: Extractor builder authentication methods. 

Analyst access added to Transformation Hub (2024-08-05) Users with an Admin role in a team can now give Analyst users within that team access to Transformation Hub using permissions. For information on assigning permissions, see Service-level user permissions.

Control Celonis catalog updates for object-centric process mining (2024-08-05) Previously, when we released a new version of the Celonis catalog with upgraded object types, event types, relationships, transformations, and perspectives, we applied the update automatically in your team. This includes Celonis catalog items in processes that you've already enabled and used in your object-centric data model, which might get behavior changes or new attributes. It's important to keep your Celonis catalog items up to date because downstream consumers such as our Business Apps are always based on the latest version of the object types and event types in the Celonis catalog. You also need to keep the SQL transformations up to date so that they are compatible with the current requirements for the object-centric data model - out of date transformations might result in errors when you try to save and publish your model. But there's always times when you're in the middle of something important and you don't want an update right now. From 31 July, you can choose when to apply a new Celonis catalog update in your team. When a new version of the catalog is available, we'll display an Update available link on the Objects and Events dashboard next to the current catalog version, and an Update button on the catalog view. Click the button to get a link to the release notes, and read what's changed in this update and in any previous updates that you skipped. Then select Update catalog if you want to go ahead with the update, or Cancel if you don't want to update now. You'll still have the option available to update when you're ready.

Activity history component added for new Studio Views (2024-07-29) When using the Celonis Platform, all events (such as augmented attribute updates, comments, and task updates) are automatically captured and recorded against rows in a data model table. You can now use the Activity history component to display these events in your new Studio Views, giving you increased visibility into your process data and strengthening your auditing options. You can find the Activity history component in the Object-specific details group in View Edit Mode. To learn how to add an Activity history to your new Studio View, see: Activity history. 

Changes to Action Flow notifications (2024-07-25) Action Flow notifications will now group all errors and warnings into a single message rather than sending individual emails for each error or warning. Notifications will include a link to each warning or error and the scenario history with the specific details. Notifications for errors are sent every 5 minutes, while notifications for the warnings are sent every 15 minutes. Note: Email notifications for deactivations will not be changed as part of this update.

Rename custom object types and event types in your object-centric data model (2024-07-24) You can now rename custom object types and event types after you've created them. Click the context menu (the three vertical dots) for the object type or event type in the listing, and select Rename.  When you rename an object type or event type: We'll automatically update the name in perspectives that use your renamed object type or event type.Object to object relationships and event to object relationships involving your renamed object type or event type will continue to work, but you should update the relationship name if it used the old name. We'll show you which relationships might be affected.You'll need to update transformations that reference the old name in SQL statements. We'll show you which transformations are affected.We'll delete the database table for the object type or event type and recreate it with the new name. If you already built objects or events, they'll be deleted. You'll need to run your transformations again (after updating them) to create the objects or events again. For the instructions to work with custom object types and event types, see Creating custom object types and custom event types.

Dynamic connections for Action Flows (2024-07-24) Dynamic connections allow you to enforce additional authentication of users with their personal credentials whenever they run an Action Flow. Dynamic connections allow you to apply individual user permissions from the respective systems to your automations. Additionally, by providing personal credentials when executing an Action Flow, the user name is recorded in the audit log, which improves traceability. You can enable dynamic connection for all Action Flows with execution scheduling set to “On demand”. For more information, see Dynamic connections.