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. They are not just database records. They carry 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.
Object Value
Teams can talk about the same client, project, approval, or invoice with a common definition.
Object Value
Work is tied to the object it affects, which makes state, history, and next actions easier to manage.
Object Value
Different platforms can participate in the same flow because the object model defines the shared meaning.
Object Value
AI can reason from object state, relationships, rules, ownership, and workflow position.
Object Value
Reporting can show the movement of work through the business, not just activity inside individual tools.
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.