# Concepts

> The pieces of Middleout and how they relate: memory, data, artifacts, alerts and roles.

## Memory

The memory is what Middleout knows about your business and what you can still teach it. It is organized as a knowledge graph: each piece is an object, and objects relate to each other.

The main object types are:

| Type | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| Metric | A number the business tracks, with its formula and the tables it comes from. |
| Definition | A business word with an agreed definition. |
| Decision | Something someone decided: the question, what was chosen, the alternatives and the assumptions. |
| Rule | An agreed way of doing or interpreting something. |
| Procedure | Steps that repeat. |
| Learning | Something discovered while working with the data. |
| Mental model | How someone explains the causes of something that happens in the business. |
| Table | A table from a data source, with the description of its columns. |
| Document | A document from a source, such as a Drive file or a file in a repository. |

### Concepts, graph, corrections and proposals

- **Concepts**: the business words with an agreed definition.
- **Graph**: every concept Middleout knows and how they relate.
- **Corrections**: when two people or two sources say different things about the same thing, Middleout does not pick one on its own. It shows both versions and a person decides which one holds.
- **Proposals**: relations someone proposed, which can be confirmed or dismissed. What is confirmed weighs more when Middleout reasons.

## Data

The sources you connect: databases, spreadsheets, folders, repositories and meetings. Middleout studies them and what it understands goes into the memory. See [Connect your sources](/docs/connect-sources).

A source can be **personal** (only the person who connected it sees and queries it) or **organization** (shared, and also used by the work Middleout does on its own, such as alerts and scheduled updates).

## Artifacts

What you produce working with Middleout. All three are connected to the figures they come from.

- **Investigation**: keeps a business question alive. It has an owner, hypotheses, evidence, the dashboards where it is tracked and a conclusion. It starts as something personal and can be published to the team or to the organization.
- **Dashboard**: you ask and save the answer; the figures update themselves. A dashboard can have pages and sections, and an authorized person can certify it as official for the organization.
- **Presentation**: what you show to others. Each slide points to a chart or a finding, so if a figure changes, it also changes in the presentation.

## Alerts

Middleout watches the figures that matter and emails you when they break the rule you set for them, or when they return to normal.

## Chat

The main entry point: you ask in natural language and Middleout answers with data from your sources, citing where each thing comes from. Investigations, dashboards and presentations start from the chat.

## Organization, areas and roles

- **Organization**: your company in Middleout. Each person acts within the organizations they are a member of.
- **Organization roles**: `owner` (whoever created it), `admin` (organizes people: creates teams and decides who is in them) and `member`.
- **Teams and areas**: group the people and the knowledge of each part of the company.
- **Data steward**: a person authorized to curate information; for example, to certify a dashboard as official.
- **Area steward**: curates the knowledge of an area. An area can have several stewards.

Each person, and each assistant connected on their behalf, sees only what their permissions allow them to see.