November 2023 Release Notes
Admin and Settings (2023-11-20)
Issue temporary user invitations
When you invite new users to your Celonis team, you can now specify an “Active Until” date after which the user’s team membership is locked. You can use this feature to issue a temporary invite to a user that needs to access the team for a time-limited period. When the date is reached, the user account is handled according to your team’s user locking policy - the account is automatically removed from the team if you’ve set that in the policy, or else the team membership can be unlocked if you want. For the instructions, see Inviting users to your Celonis platform team.
SAP RFC Module 3.8.0 (2023-11-20)
Extract aged SAP HANA data and CDS Views with parameters
This version of the RFC Module enables you to:
Pass parameters for CDS Views in the data job
Extract aged data from an SAP HANA database
Select change log tables to include in the transport
The updated RFC module also includes improved file listing logic for faster file fetching, better error messages for issues with the change log table, and automatic synchronization of the change log table with the data dictionary.
SAP Extractor (2023-11-20)
Upgrade to our improved on-prem client for SAP extraction
We're deprecating the uplink-based SAP Extractor, and introducing an improved on-prem client that runs most of the orchestration and data processing logic in the cloud. There's still an on-prem component to install, but we'll make most of our updates and fixes in the cloud instead of requiring you to upgrade your local client. The cloud can also handle more data more reliably, scaling and adjusting processing capabilities based on traffic.
We’ve simplified the setup for this version of the on-prem client:
You can use the same SAP connection for both the SAP Extractor and Process Automation.
Microsoft Visual C++ 2010, which was previously required for Parquet conversion, is no longer required as the conversion is done in the Celonis cloud now.
We've added a user-friendly GUI to monitor and manage the client installation and services.
Use the on-prem client for new teams, and set it up for existing teams as soon as you're able. You can keep your uplink-based SAP Extractor running alongside the on-prem client if you want, with the possibility to swap the Data Connection back to it at any time. When you're confident in the new data pipeline you can uninstall the operating system service for the uplink-based SAP Extractor. We'll continue to support the uplink-based extractor until we let you know otherwise.
On-prem connectivity version 1.1.0 (2023-11-20)
GA release of upgraded on-prem clients with simplified installation flow
The upgraded Celonis on-prem clients for Windows, Linux and MacOS are now in General Availability status. The on-prem clients use a new Oauth 2.0 authentication flow to securely connect your on-premises source systems with Celonis to extract and write back data. You can authorize Celonis to access specific on-premises applications and carry out pre-defined actions using Action Flows. We encrypt your sensitive data in the configuration file.
You can manage the on-prem clients in a central interface in Admin & Settings. We provide a guided user flow for download and installation. The OS-agnostic local management tool simplifies installation for IT and removes manual steps. If you’re already using the Automation Agent and the SAP Extractor, you can update them to leverage the consolidated on-premises connectivity.
See On-premise clients (OPC) for the documentation.
Process Intelligence Graph (2023-11-15)
Unlocking a new class of process intelligence for enterprises
We’re launching the Process Intelligence Graph, which combines process data, process knowledge, and Celonis’ open platform to provide a common, data-driven language that drives process optimization for enterprises. It’s fully embedded in the Celonis platform, capturing and unifying your organization’s process data into a system-agnostic, enriched digital twin.
The object-centric data model - the basis of our object-centric process mining technology, enabling you to capture your process data and turn it into objects and events.
You can read more about the Process Intelligence Graph in this blog post on celonis.com.
Object-centric process mining - setup (2023-11-14)
Get started with individual processes from our catalog
You can now choose to set up individual processes from the object-centric data model, and install only the object types, event types, and perspectives supplied by Celonis that you need. Our new catalog lets you start by enabling any or all of the Celonis core processes - Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Order Management, Procurement, and Inventory Management. Use the dashboard to see the processes you’ve enabled, and to add more processes when you’re ready. If you already have an object-centric data model with all the processes enabled, you can disable any that you aren't using.
With the new setup procedure, we’ll enable everything you need to implement the selected process: the object types and event types, their relationships, and the perspective for the process. You can also start with a blank sheet if you want to build your own custom process by creating object types and event types.
When you select a data connection, if there are prebuilt transformations for your source system, we’ll enable those too. If you have multiple source systems of the same type, you can deploy the transformations more than once, and we’ll combine the result sets. Or you can create your own custom transformations to transform data from any source system into objects and events.
To start setting up your object-centric data model, see Quickstart: Extract and transform your data into objects and events.
Object-centric process mining - modeling (2023-11-14)
Easier modeling of objects, events, and relationships
We've upgraded the modeling experience for objects and events. It's easier to find object types and event types and view their attributes, relationships, and transformations. Following feedback from our early adopters of object-centric process mining, we’ve renamed the characteristics of objects and events from “properties” to “attributes”, to match how you use them in views and applications.
Relationships between objects and events are also now simpler to model. You can create object to object relationships while you're creating the object types, and when you’re creating object to object relationships, we'll let you know if two object types are already related in other ways. Event to object relationships can be created when you're working with the object type as well as when you’re working with the event type. We manage mapping of relationship data for you using defaults, so you don’t need to consider that in your modeling unless you have a special case.
Modeling objects and events has the updated instructions.
We've upgraded the perspectives editor to help you explore connected objects, and to make it more straightforward to choose a strategy for object to object relationships. We're also using the term "event logs" now instead of "projections".
Creating custom perspectives and event logs tells you how to use the perspectives editor.
Object-centric process mining - transformations (2023-11-14)
Upgraded SQL editor and overwrites for transformations
You can now overwrite part or all of the Celonis-supplied transformations for SAP ECC or Oracle EBS data sources with your own custom SQL query. For example, if you don’t have business data for a particular column, you can create a partial overwrite to set that attribute of the object to NULL. Or if you need to change table joins or add filtering for your data, you can create a full overwrite to replace the transformation for an object or event with your own SQL query.
The SQL editor for creating transformation scripts has a new look and lots of functional improvements:
We pre-generate a template when you create a script, with all the attributes you need to map for this object type, event type, relationship, or change table.
There's a preview window to show you the attributes you still need to map, along with their data types and whether the column is a primary key or foreign key.
Use the Preview Script button to run your SQL query against a sample of your real data from the data source and check that it works as you expect.
The Data Source explorer lets you search for a table in your data source, see its columns, and insert a column into your script with one click.
You can create, insert, and reuse local parameters in your scripts.
If you want to create temporary result sets, you can enable materialization for common table expressions in the advanced options.
To give you more flexibility in handling your data, you can now create events directly from your source system data if you want to. You can also still choose to populate event types from the tables of objects and changes in the OCDM schema.
Our guide to writing and overwriting transformations is at Creating custom transformations.
Object-centric process mining - development (2023-11-14)
Validate your customizations in a development environment
We've added a pre-production stage for the object-centric data model that lets you publish your custom object types, event types, transformations, and perspectives to a development environment. There’s a dedicated test data job and test perspectives in the OCPM data pool, which populate test object types and event types. This setup enables end-to-end testing of your changes.
Data extractions and transformations for object-centric process mining has more details.
When your updates have been validated in the development environment, and you’ve tested them with your data, you can publish them to the production environment. In production, the environment is read-only and users can’t make customizations and changes - so you know that environment is stable.
Transformation Hub (2023-11-14)
The central hub for monitoring your transformation program and business impact
Transformation Hub is the central hub for managing your transformation program and quantifying the business impact of Celonis implementations. It supports you in your value journey as you prioritize opportunities to work on, monitor progress, and measure outcomes.
Transformation Hub enables easy management of and collaboration on value opportunities implemented across your enterprise. Record all opportunities in Transformation Hub for prioritization and planning based on strategic objectives and potential impact. Accelerate progress and quantify business impact with Celonis in-product best practices and process knowledge.
We provide reporting functionalities out of the box with no need for custom builds. You can visualize your outcomes across processes, objectives and value stages in one place, and stay up to date on the performance of your transformation program. With Transformation Hub, you’ll get visibility and transparency into the work of your team, how value is quantified, and the KPI improvements driving value creation, for stakeholders across the organization.
You can read more about Transformation Hub in this blog post on celonis.com, and in the documentation at Setting up Transformation Hub. Transformation Hub will be in General Availability on 14 November. It's included by default for Celonis Foundation, Celonis Process Based, and C4C Credit Based customers. If your team should have access to Transformation Hub but you’re not seeing it in the navigation menu, please reach out to your Celonis representative.
Studio (2023-11-14)
Limited Availability Program for Studio enhancements starting soon - sign up now
Celonis Studio is the workbench for analysts to analyze data, explore processes and build solutions to identify and realize value for their organization. We've been busy rebuilding Studio to make it easy and delightful for analysts. With the upcoming enhancements we want to bring joy to our users and get analysts up and running fast to help them build solutions in an intuitive and easy-to-use way.
On November 30th 2023, we’re starting a Limited Availability program which includes:
A much more intuitive and coherent Apps (for business users) and Studio navigation experience with improved search and guided creation flows.
Simplified view editing to empower analysts to quickly and easily build dashboards and apps using drag-and-drop, visualization recommendations and integrated action setup.
Enhanced PQL building functionality that simplifies the selection and aggregation of data while building your components. You can write PQL queries locally and see results immediately or tap into a Knowledge Model.
You can read more about the Studio enhancements in this blog post on celonis.com or by reading Studio.
Material Allocation app version 1.0.0 (2023-11-14)
Understand material excess and shortage and find reallocation opportunities (Limited Availability)
Our new object-centric Material Allocation app for Inventory Management is launching in Limited Availability. The app gives you a unified view across all your materials, helping you to understand current excess and shortage situations.
You can leverage constraint-based optimization to find the best opportunity for re-allocating existing supply from where it is not needed, to where it is needed the most. The app takes labor or transportation cost into account as well as any additional constraints specific to your business. Use the Bill of Material Explosion and Inventory Projection features to evaluate the impact and feasibility of your proposed re-allocations.
The Material Allocation app is built for object-centric process mining, so you’ll need a Celonis license that includes this. Talk to your Celonis point of contact to find out more.
Data Integration (2023-11-08)
VARCHAR column sizes optimized during data extraction
When you're extracting data from source systems into Celonis, we now automatically adapt the column size for columns with the VARCHAR datatype, to be more appropriate for the actual length of the content. With the optimized column sizes, you might well see a significant performance improvement for your subsequent transformations and data model loads.
Migrate now from Process Analytics to Studio Analysis (November 2023)
Studio Analysis is replacing Process Analytics. If you’re still using Process Analytics, migrate your analyses to Studio Analysis. We’re removing access to Process Analytics on or after October 31, 2023.
You’re likely to have Process Analytics on your Celonis Platform team if you became a Celonis customer in April 2021 or earlier. If you don't have Process Analytics on your Celonis Platform team, or if you are on Celonis 4, no action is required. To check, look for the Process Analytics icon in the navigation bar.
Process Analytics and Studio Analysis have the exact same look and feel, so you can resume working with your analyses in Studio without any additional training. Studio also has the latest capabilities and user experiences in app-building and automation.