Platform Overview

The EVRYTHNG Platform allows developers to make their products smarter by connecting them to the web and giving them their own unique online Active Digital Identity (ADI). We call these ADI-enabled products connected to the web "Thngs." Each Thng is a permanent cloud data resource to hold up-to-date information and history about the corresponding real-world product. The attributes and state of a real-world product are reflected in the Thng, associated with a Products, which in turn can be connected to countless other platforms and integrations to drive rich experiences.

A Thng is just one of many types of resource available on the EVRYTHNG Platform. These resources are created, owned, and managed by one of several types of actors, representing different kinds of users. Actors have their own roles and permissions for customizable access rights and visibility, and make requests to the Platform with their own unique API keys. Visibility and grouping of resources is also specified with various levels of scope, allowing precise access control and separation of concerns for multiple client projects.

The rest of this page outlines other important resource types and concepts. Read the linked documentation sections for more information.

Accounts

Each EVRYTHNG Platform implementation begins with an account, created when a developer signs up for the EVRYTHNG Dashboard. Management of account-level resources and other setup is done by the account owner as the ‘Operator’ actor. Operators can manage virtually all resources and relationships in an account and have the highest levels of access through their Operator API Key or the Dashboard.

Accounts can also be

• shared between two or more Operators with separate Dashboard accounts, and
• given specific roles to allow controlled data access when sharing resources with collaborators.

These roles can limit a guest Operator’s visibility to certain projects or Dashboard pages as required.

Projects and Applications

Project resources are the primary method of grouping and limiting visibility of other types of resources. They allow developers to implement a logical separation of resources to reflect their real-world grouping. For example, a project might contain all Thngs that belong to a single marketing campaign and limit visibility to only other Operators who worked on that campaign. Most resource types support scoping to one or more projects as required by the integration designer, except those that are designed to be accessible or affect the entire account, which can be scoped to all projects.

Each project can contain one or more application resources which represent end-user web or mobile applications providing views into and control over the resources contained in an account. For example, a warehouse manager might use a mobile app (represented as an EVRYTHNG application resource) that shows all stock in a particular warehouse, and allow the warehouse manager to mark them as received/shipped/missing as they arrive and depart. These applications use their Access Tokens to directly interact with the resources the app owns and controls.

Operators

Operators represent the real people interacting with the EVRYTHNG Platform as part of their role within the solution, such as the example warehouse manager. Operators can be created with an email address and password login. They're scoped to the whole account but can have limited access to specific areas of the platform, depending on which role(s) they are assigned. This can be further customized to ensure only particular types of resources are available to them by applying Restrictive Conditions to their access keys.

Upon creation (as well as each subsequent login), an Operator is granted their own API Keys access credentials to interact with the resources that the account admin Operator has made available and in-scope to them.

Thngs, Products, and Collections

The core data resources of the EVRYTHNG Platform are Thngs. Each product item connected to the Platform is represented by a Thng resource. To facilitate their roles as digital product counterparts, Thngs can store any arbitrary data as JSON data, such as single value customFields and identifiers (SKU-level data), or as properties (real-time state) that include a history of previous values.

Thngs can (and are highly recommended to) maintain a reference to their SKU in the form of a product resource. A product resource is designed to act as a class containing data and information that is common to all Thng instances. For example, a set of Thngs each representing individual items of clothing must reference the single product resource that specifies the SKU's barcode, serial number, color codes, and other common items of data.

The third main resource type is the collection resource. A collection is designed to enable grouping of Thngs (and even other collections) into a single referrable resource. It usually represents a batch of manufactured goods, a group of products belonging to a particular user, and other such groupings. Like Thngs and products, collections can also contain customFields, identifiers, and tags to facilitate searching and labelling.

Actions and Action Types

Action resources represent discrete events, messages, and other interactions by Application Users or other actors. Though not specifically designed as data container resource, actions can also include customFields, identifiers, and tags, to enhance their capabilities as a record of events and enhance discoverability.

Actions have an action type associated in a similar relationship as product resources are to Thngs, and are usually created on a target Thng, product, or collection. For example, an action could be created on a Thng to signify that it has been sold to a consumer, or on a collection to record it has moved to a new warehouse.

By strategically creating actions of different types on different product resources, data becomes available to drive customizable Dashboard widgets that can provide insight into how the account is performing. For example, widgets can show the number of missing goods or how well users are engaging with products.

Other Resources and APIs

The EVRYTHNG Platform includes many other resource types that extend the capabilities of a well planned integration, such as places, locations, and redirections.

We also offer a more advanced, enterprise-level programmable Reactor rule engine, Redirector dynamic redirection service, and numerous integrations with other 3rd party clouds. The Blockchain Integration Hub serves as a single point to integrate with blockchains.