This page describes the record type object. If you're already familiar with the record type, learn how to create a record type in your application.

What are record types?

A record type is a design object that allows you to structure and model your enterprise data so you can easily build data-centric applications.

Each record type represents a major business concept or process in your organization. For example, in an order fulfillment organization, you could have record types for Products, Inventory, Order Submissions, and Customers since these are primary concepts and activities involved in the organization.

You can have as many record types as you need to represent your data model. In our order fulfillment example, this means that you could have numerous record types, as illustrated in the image below.

When you create a record type, you can enable data sync to unlock a set of powerful features that make it easy to unify and secure your enterprise data. Once you've configured the record type, you can use it to reference data throughout your applications—in interfaces, expressions, process models, and more.

Business users can also leverage your record types in Process HQ, where they can explore business data and processes to answer common business questions on their own.

Elements of a record type

Each record type contains the following elements:

Element	Description
Record data	The data available in the record type, including your source data and any custom record fields. This data can be manipulated, related, filtered, and referenced using the record type object.
Records	Each row of data in the record type. For example, in a Customer record type, a single record would be John Smith.
Record views	One or more interfaces that displays information about a single record. You can use a combination of interface components and data to create a comprehensive view of the record. By default, each record has a summary view.
Record list	A single, drillable list that users can search and filter to find records.
Record actions	Links to process models that a user can start directly from a record or from the record list. This allows users to create, update, or delete data while viewing the data.

As you configure the different elements of your record type, you can apply different levels of security to ensure that only the right users can access the right data.