Purpose
Viewpoints are certified business pictures — predefined, read-only perspectives Role Assistants use when work needs an approved shape of the business, not more documents or a raw list of records.
Examples: revenue by customer, pipeline by stage, or actual cost by cost centre. A viewpoint is calculated when used under Operational Trust, while underlying applications remain the systems of record. It is not a second reporting warehouse.
| Need | Use |
|---|---|
| Permitted documents and records for the case | Smart RAG / records search |
| An approved business picture for the decision | Viewpoint |
The Connected System owner defines and certifies the perspective. AI Fabrix applies the user’s permissions and business scope when the viewpoint runs and exposes the result through a governed read capability.
Why it matters
Most enterprises already know how to answer “how are we doing?” in management reporting: curated slices, KPIs, period totals. Recreating that for AI from raw entity rows is hard. Publishing classic reporting stacks into AI creates other risks: second copies of truth, weak scope control, and tools that look like BI but are not under Operational Trust.
Viewpoints close that gap inside AI Fabrix without turning AI into a reporting warehouse:
| Without viewpoints | With viewpoints |
|---|---|
| Assistants list customers, then deals, then guess the story | Assistants read a predefined business picture (for example revenue and deal count per customer) |
| Finance sees orgs and expenses as separate lists | Finance sees actual cost by cost centre under the user’s applicable permissions and business-dimension scope |
| Only reporting teams own “the number” outside AI | The Connected System owner defines and certifies a read-only business perspective for AI |
The biggest value is that certified business picture — trustworthy, scoped, and owned by the Connected System — not “we joined two tables.”
A viewpoint is calculated when its read capability runs. It is not a separately synchronized or materialized reporting dataset.
How it works
A viewpoint calculates a governed business perspective from synchronized Business Entities.
The connected CRM, ERP, finance, or other business application remains the system of record. AI Fabrix does not create another reporting repository or synchronize viewpoint results. Instead, the viewpoint calculates the required result when its read capability runs.
The platform:
- Validates and certifies the viewpoint definition.
- Applies the user’s applicable permissions and business-dimension scope.
- Calculates the defined measures, dimensions, and totals.
- Returns the result through a read-only governed capability.
A viewpoint can combine several Business Entities, but joins are an implementation detail. Its business contract is the result: what each row represents, which measures it contains, and which questions it can answer.
Connected business systems (systems of record)
→ synchronized Business Entities in AI Fabrix
→ viewpoint (certified business perspective)
→ governed read for Role Assistants / MCP
Finance example
A finance Connected System holds synchronized organizations (cost centres) and expenses / actuals (many period rows per cost centre).
Records search retrieves authorized entity records: which cost centres may this controller see? which expense rows are in scope?
Viewpoint returns an authorized, business-shaped perspective — for example actual cost by cost centre for the periods and measures the Connected System owner defined and certified. Sales Germany may see eight cost centres and thousands of expense rows as separate lists; the valuable AI answer is not “8 + 2357.” It is the finance picture those controllers already expect from operational analysis — calculated when the viewpoint runs, under the user’s applicable permissions and business-dimension scope, without publishing another reporting copy for AI.
Sales example
A CRM Connected System holds synchronized companies, contacts, and deals as separate Business Entities.
Records search retrieves authorized companies, contacts, and deals.
Viewpoint returns perspectives such as:
- Revenue and deal count by customer
- Pipeline by stage
- Deal activity by country
- Contact coverage by company
That is the same class of cut sales ops builds for management reporting — now as a certified, read-only business perspective Role Assistants can use under Operational Trust, instead of teaching the model to reconstruct business meaning from three entity lists.
When to use which
| Need | Prefer |
|---|---|
| Individual authorized records, identifiers, or record metadata from a specific Business Entity | Records search |
| A predefined business picture (measures, dimensions, grain, fields) | Viewpoint |
| Combining related entities only as a means to that picture | Viewpoint |
| Narrow identifiers before document retrieval | Records search |
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Impact | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Treating viewpoints as “just joins” | Misses the business-perspective value | Design measures, dimensions, and grain first; certify the contract |
| Expecting multi-datasource records search to return a report-shaped answer | Separate entity lists or wrong totals | Publish a viewpoint for the business picture |
| Pushing BI extracts into agents outside the platform | Copy risk, weak scope control, opaque refresh | Prefer certified viewpoints on Connected Systems |
| Treating a viewpoint as a persisted reporting dataset | Wrong ownership and refresh expectations | Remember: calculated when the read capability runs |
| Putting write or sync expectations on a viewpoint | Invalid for a read-only perspective | Keep viewpoints read-only |
Business value
Viewpoints make certified business snapshots available to AI without forcing assistants to reconstruct business meaning from separate entity lists or requiring organizations to publish another reporting copy for AI.
Records search retrieves authorized operational records. Viewpoints provide authorized, decision-shaped perspectives based on business-defined measures, dimensions, and grain.
This gives Role Assistants the context needed to answer business questions consistently while the Connected System retains ownership of definitions and AI Fabrix enforces Operational Trust.
Limits
Viewpoints calculate when the governed read capability runs. They are not separately synchronized reporting datasets, and they do not replace records search for individual authorized records or identifiers.
Available measures, dimensions, grain, and result shapes depend on what the Connected System owner defined and certified, and on which Business Entities are synchronized and in the user’s applicable permissions and business-dimension scope. Confirm current behavior in your environment before treating a viewpoint as the sole source for dashboards or automated Role Assistant loops.
Integrators: Build a viewpoint entity.