Business Object Model
Business objects represent the core things a business manages, moves, approves, delivers, measures, or automates.
What Is a Business Object?
Business objects give teams a shared language for the things the business works on. A database record stores fields. A business object carries business meaning, lifecycle state, related work, source context, ownership, and rules.
Common examples include:
Flow Objects vs Flow Items
Flow Objects
Flow Objects are the core business entities moving through the operating system. They have state, ownership, relationships, rules, and a lifecycle.
Flow Items
Flow Items are the tasks, data, approvals, documents, notes, status changes, decisions, and artifacts that move inside a Flow Object.
Why Business Objects Matter
When business objects are defined clearly, teams can coordinate work across tools without losing meaning. Dashboards, workflows, integrations, and AI all operate from the same business context.
Shared Language
A "closed" deal means the same thing to sales and finance, instead of triggering a reconciliation conversation every quarter.
Data Connection
A task, an approval, and a status update all point back to the same project record instead of living in three separate tools.
Interoperability
The CRM's "customer," the billing system's "account," and the support tool's "org" all resolve to the same underlying record.
AI Context
An agent drafting a renewal email knows whether the contract is signed, pending, or already churned, instead of guessing from whichever record it finds first.
Reporting Accuracy
Leadership sees how many deals are stuck at legal review, not just how many are open.
Business Object Services
The BOS runtime manages business objects through services that store, update, relate, and orchestrate them. Those services handle object definitions, lifecycle state, permissions, relationships, event history, and system interactions.
This gives applications, dashboards, automations, and AI services a governed way to work with operational objects. The business object remains stable even when the underlying systems are changed, replaced, or extended.
Business Object
Each object defines state, ownership, related items, rules, history, and connections to other objects.
Object Services
Services create, update, relate, govern, and coordinate objects across workflows, systems, dashboards, and AI.
Next Step
The examples page shows how sales operations, project delivery, and AI-enabled workflows use business objects as the shared layer.