Creating and importing events
In the Celonis Platform, events represent actions related to business entities, such as orders being created, invoices paid, or deliveries shipped. Events form the chronological backbone of process mining by capturing what happens and when. Each event belongs to an event type, which defines its identifier, attributes, and links to objects and other events. Celonis creates one event instance for each unique row in the source data.
Custom event types let you model business-specific activities when standard events don’t fully represent your processes, enabling more accurate analysis.
When creating custom event types, you can either define them from scratch or import them from existing tables in your source systems:
Create from scratch: Define event ID, attributes (e.g., timestamp, status, quantity), and relationships manually; full flexibility for new types of events.
Create from table: When importing from existing source tables, columns become event attributes, foreign keys suggest relationships to objects or other events, and transformation scripts are generated automatically. This approach can save time and ensure consistency if your source data already contains event-centric information, and you can extend imported event types later by adding more attributes or relationships.
To create a custom events from scratch using the Objects and Events dashboard:
Click Events.
Click Create - Model from scratch.
Configure the object type:
Name: Enter a unique name up to 40 characters, using only letters and numbers (no spaces or special characters).
Color: Change the display color used for the event type in the model graph view.
Description: An optional description for this event, visible when viewing the event in the table view only.
Tags: Tags are used to organize, categorize, and filter object types and event types within your object-centric data model. They don’t affect the data itself, they’re purely for management, navigation, and clarity.
Celonis processes: Choose from existing tags used as part of Celonis provided processes.
Custom processes: Enter text to create a new tag or select from existing tags.
Attributes: Configure events attributes to define the properties of an event, choose data types, and enable filtering, grouping, and analysis of your events.
You can choose from the following attribute types: Boolean, datetime, floating point, long integer, and string.
Click Save.
After completing these steps, your custom event is created and ready to use, and you can publish it to the development environment to make it available for transformations and analysis.
You can create custom events from a table in your source systems, saving you from manually recreating them.
Before you begin
To import your objects and events, the data source must be accessible via a data connection in your data pool.
To share data between your data pools, see: Sharing data between data pools.
Importing custom event types
To import custom event types from a table:
Click Events.
Click Create - Import from table.
Select the data source you want to use and then select the tables from that data source to import.
Select how the events are stored in the table:
Events for columns:Each timetampe column represents one event type (create multiple).
Events from rows, with a column specifying activities: Each row is an activity. All unique activities are aggregated into one event (create single).
Events from rows, with columns including old and new values: Each row is a change. All changes are aggregated into one event (create single).
Click Next.
The imported events are displayed in edit mode.
Select each imported table to review the events generated from it.
You can optionally configure the following:
Event ID: Use the dropdown next to the required ID attribute (this attribute can’t be renamed or removed). The selected column can’t be reused as another attribute. Alternatively, set this to None (create later) and generate the ID in your transformation script.
Columns: Check or uncheck columns to include or exclude them.
Add attributes: Click Add attribute to create additional attributes populated from data outside the selected table.
Rename attributes: Rename existing attributes (defaults to the column name).
Tags and descriptions: Apply existing Celonis tags or create custom tags (up to 41 characters) for filtering and reuse.
Click Next to move on to the Relationships step.
You have the following options here:
One table: Relationships aren’t available. Select Back to add tables, or Skip relationships to continue.
Multiple tables: Create relationships or select Skip relationships to continue.
Create relationships: Choose Create new or Import.
Click Next, review the events that you're creating, and then click Create.
The events are now created and can be viewed in your dashboard.
We recommend reviewing transformations now. To do this later or edit event types, click Go to events.
Custom object types and event types can be extended over time by adding attributes and relationships, including links to existing Celonis objects and events. Object and event extensions are available after publishing in the current environment. A production deployment is only required if the analysis runs in production.
To extend or edit an existing object or event:
From the dashboard, click Objects / Events.
Select the object or event you want to extend, opening the configuration panel.
Make the necessary updates to the object or event, using the information provided in the above procedures.
Click Save.
Optional: If the object or event extension is required in your production environment, click Deploy.
For more information about versioning and deployment, see: Versioning and deploying OCDM.