Entity Treeviews (ETV) – Key Definitions

Understanding the core components of the Entity Treeviews (ETV) app is essential for building and managing effective hierarchical structures. Below are the main terms and concepts used throughout the app.

Treeview

A Treeview is a hierarchical structure used to organize entities such as customers, vendors, items, locations or sales/purchase personnel. It allows you to group and manage these entities in a multi-level format that reflects your business logic.

Root

• The Root is the default starting point of any Treeview.
• It is a mandatory node and cannot be renamed or removed.
• It represents the base level from which all other nodes branch out.

Node

A Node represents a group or individual element within the Treeview. There are two types of nodes:

🔹 Real Node

• A Real Node is directly linked to an existing entity in your system.
• It uses the entity’s code as the node’s code.
• Example:
  Suppose Customer A is the parent company of Customers B and C. All three exist in your customer file. In this case, each customer is a real node in the tree.

🔹 Virtual Node

• A Virtual Node is not tied to an actual entity in your system.
• It is used to group multiple real nodes for organizational purposes.
• You define the code for a virtual node manually.
• Example:
  You want to group customers by market and sub-market. These groupings (e.g., “Retail Market,” “Wholesale Submarket”) don’t exist as customers themselves—they are virtual nodes used for structure.