Using Custom Entity Types with Ellie

Owned by Juha Korpela (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 20, 2023 by Juha Korpela (Unlicensed)
4 min read

If your User has the Administrator role set, you can enter the Settings, which is short for Organization global settings, wherein you can rename, add or remove Entity types available in the Organization. These new or changed Entity Types will then be visible from the Conceptual Modelling dropdown menu - when right-clicking on an Entity and navigating to the Entity type dropdown.

This short guide is built on how to go from this:

The Original Ellie Entity Types

To something like this, for example:

For the longest time, Ellie users have been working with the following list:

  • Not set (Orange) - Default Entity type

  • Master (Black)

  • Contract (Bright purple)

  • Transaction (Pale blue)

  • Reference (Gray)

  • Transaction header (Deep purple)

  • Transaction detail (Navy blue)

Enter five new colors. We have a total of 12 colors you can choose from.

Also, any Entity can be set to the Default Entity Type.

You can rename any of the currently existing Entity Types, and add new Entity Types.

So, where is it?

Upon logging in, as an Admin user, navigate to the Dashboard, click on the Cog and select “Settings”

The main page will look like this:

Clicking on any name will let you start renaming the Entity Type. Clicking on the colour next to a Category Type brings up the palette of 12 available colours.

To add a brand new Entity Type, you can click on the textfield with the grey placeholder text “+ New Entity Type”.

As you can see, there is also a button “Reset to Ellie types” which resets the Entity Types of your Organization back to the default ones.

If you hover your mouse over any Entity type, additional features will be revealed, i.e. Delete and “set as default”.

After making the required changes, click on Save. If it feels like you do not want to retain the changes, just click on Cancel.

These are not realtime changes, so any editor will need to refresh their Conceptual Model Canvas in order to see the newly added / changed Entity Types. A simple browser refresh will take care of this.

If you choose to delete any Entity Type, Ellie will change all the Entities using that Entity Type to the Default type - and inform you prior to deleting the Entity Type with the dialog below.

If you choose to Reset the Entity types to the Ellie originals, all the current Entities of any type will be changed to the “Not Set” default type - and you will see a warning much like the dialog below:

Please note that you can try any changes on the page, and they will not be saved until you click on the Save button. If you feel like the changes you’ve made do not work and should not be saved, then click on the Cancel button.

Another important detail is that instead of deleting an Entity Type and adding a new one, you might benefit from simply renaming an existing Entity Type and/or changing it’s colour - that way none of the Entities using that Entity Type will revert to the Default Entity Type.

Last, but not least: These changes are for the Organization in question wholesale, and affect each and every Model, Entity and User of the Organization.