Audience: This article is for Hornbill Administrators, particularly those who are responsible for reporting and configuring Workflows.
In Hornbill, entities play an important role in organizing all of the information across your Service Desk. But what exactly is an entity? And why is understanding entities useful to you? This blog explores what entities are and how you can use them to create insightful reports in Hornbill.
Watch this video for an overview:
What is an Entity?
An entity in Hornbill represents an object or data that needs to be tracked. An object can be many things such as a user, a service request, or an incident. Each entity has associated attributes like a status, a type or a priority, for example. These attributes help categorize and manage entities throughout their lifecycle. For example, a "Request" entity might include attributes like the request ID, description, and created date.
Entities don’t just function in isolation—they’re linked. For instance, a service request entity submitted by a user is connected to its associated catalog item entity. When entities are linked it helps you access their information together when you create reports.
How to use Entities for reporting
Entities are not just about storing data—they are powerful tools for reporting. With Hornbill's advanced features, including the Entity Explorer, you can visually explore how entities and tables relate to one another. This makes it easier to build comprehensive reports for doing tasks such as creating table joins and identifying relationships between entities.
Whether you’re tracking service requests, monitoring incidents, or analyzing user data, understanding how entities are structured can help you tailor reports to meet your business needs. The flexibility of entities allows you to create detailed, insightful charts and dashboards that provide real-time visibility into key metrics.
Accessing advanced reporting features, like Entity Explorer, requires certain system roles and permissions, such as the Advanced Reporting Admin role.
Ready to learn more?
Entities are just the beginning of your reporting journey. To dive deeper into how to build powerful, customized reports using Hornbill’s reporting tools, check out our Academy Live courses on Reporting:
You need to be logged into the Academy to access these links.
