Manage Entity Types | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• Where to view all entity types available to your account
• What it means for an entity type to be the primary entity type
• How to update properties of an entity type, where applicable
• How to enable / disable entity types

Managing Entity Types

Now you know what an Entity Type is and the difference between Built-in and Custom Entity Types. It’s time to learn how to build and enable/disable these types.

The Entity Types screen where you can manage all of the entity types available to your account, update their properties, and add or remove fields. An entity type can have as many fields (built-in or custom) as you’d like - there’s no hard limit.

You can navigate to this screen from Content > Configuration > Entity Types.

From here, you can:

• Add a Custom Entity Type. You’ll walk through this process in the next unit.

• Enable or Disable types. You must enable a type before you can create an instance of that type. When you create a new Custom Entity Type, you must enable it before you can start creating any entities. If you don’t want users creating entities of that type yet, keep it in disabled until you do.

• Set Primary Type. The primary type is the default used on the Add Entity Type screen or when a type is not specified. It will also determine the default field labels shown on screens that display multiple types of entities. For example, the “Categories” field is labeled “Specialties” for Healthcare Professionals and Healthcare Facilities. If you have either of these types set as the primary, you will see this label by default.

• View Details for a Type. For built-in types, this is view only. For Custom defined types, you can edit things like the name, plural name, API name, or description.

• Edit Fields for a Type. For built-in types, you can only add custom fields or add additional fields to the Add Screen to make it easier for your end users. For custom defined types, you can add or remove any field, as well as define the required fields and the fields visible on the Add Screen.

• Add an Entity. If a type is enabled, you can quickly navigate to the Add Screen for that type to add an instance.