change attribute name

Overview

The Change Attribute Name enrichment allows you to rename case and event attributes in your dataset to create clearer, more meaningful, and standardized naming conventions. This enrichment is essential for improving the readability and interpretability of your process mining results, especially when working with datasets that contain cryptic, technical, or legacy attribute names. Beyond simple renaming, this enrichment also allows you to set a display name that appears in visualizations while preserving the technical attribute name for filtering and calculations.

This enrichment is particularly valuable when consolidating data from multiple sources with different naming conventions, preparing datasets for business stakeholder review, or aligning attribute names with organizational terminology. The ability to set both a technical name and a display name provides flexibility in maintaining technical accuracy while ensuring business-friendly presentation.

Common Uses

Standardize attribute naming across datasets from different source systems (e.g., renaming "VBELN" to "SalesOrderNumber" for SAP data)
Create business-friendly names for technical database field names (e.g., "CUST_ID_2023_V2" to "Customer ID")
Align with organizational terminology by renaming attributes to match company-specific terms and abbreviations
Improve dashboard readability by using clear, descriptive names that stakeholders immediately understand
Fix legacy naming issues from older systems or data migrations where attribute names no longer reflect their content
Prepare datasets for sharing by ensuring attribute names are self-explanatory without requiring documentation
Support multi-language environments by renaming attributes to the preferred business language

Settings

Attribute Name: Select the existing attribute you want to rename from the dropdown list. This list includes all available case and event attributes in your dataset, excluding system attributes like Case ID, Activity, and Timestamp. Only attributes that haven't been hidden and aren't calculated fields are shown.

New Attribute Name: Enter the new technical name for the attribute. This becomes the attribute's internal identifier used in filters, calculators, and other enrichments. The name should follow standard naming conventions: avoid special characters, use underscores or camelCase for multi-word names, and ensure uniqueness within the dataset.

New Attribute Display Name: Optionally specify a user-friendly display name that appears in visualizations and reports. This allows you to use spaces, special characters, and formatting that wouldn't be valid in technical attribute names. If left empty, the New Attribute Name will be used as the display name. This is particularly useful when you need a technical name like "order_value_usd" but want to display "Order Value ($)" in dashboards.

Examples

Example 1: Standardizing SAP Field Names

Scenario: Your procurement dataset from SAP contains German field names like "EKORG", "LIFNR", and "BEDAT" that are meaningless to business users reviewing the process analysis.

Settings:

Attribute Name: EKORG
New Attribute Name: PurchasingOrganization
New Attribute Display Name: Purchasing Organization

Output: The attribute "EKORG" is renamed to "PurchasingOrganization" throughout the dataset. In all visualizations and reports, users see "Purchasing Organization" as the label. Filters and calculations can reference either the old name (for backward compatibility) or the new name "PurchasingOrganization".

Insights: Business users can now immediately understand that this attribute represents the purchasing organization without needing to reference SAP documentation, significantly improving self-service analytics adoption.

Example 2: Consolidating Multi-System Data

Scenario: You're analyzing a order-to-cash process with data from three systems: CRM (CustomerCode), ERP (CUST_NUM), and billing system (client_identifier). You need to standardize these customer identifier fields.

Settings:

Attribute Name: CUST_NUM
New Attribute Name: CustomerID
New Attribute Display Name: Customer ID

Output: The ERP field "CUST_NUM" is renamed to "CustomerID" to match the standardized naming convention. After applying similar renaming to the other systems' fields, all customer identifiers across systems use consistent naming, enabling easier cross-system analysis and reducing confusion in multi-system process flows.

Insights: Standardized naming across systems eliminates the cognitive load of remembering different field names for the same business concept, making cross-functional process analysis more efficient.

Example 3: Creating Business-Friendly Healthcare Names

Scenario: Your hospital's patient flow dataset contains technical field names like "pt_admit_dt", "dx_primary", and "los_days" that need to be more accessible for clinical staff and administrators.

Settings:

Attribute Name: los_days
New Attribute Name: LengthOfStay
New Attribute Display Name: Length of Stay (Days)

Output: The attribute "los_days" is renamed to "LengthOfStay" for technical use, while displaying as "Length of Stay (Days)" in all user interfaces. This makes the metric immediately understandable to clinical staff reviewing patient flow patterns and helps identify bottlenecks in the discharge process.

Insights: Clear, descriptive naming helps clinical teams focus on process improvement rather than decoding technical terminology, leading to faster identification of care delivery inefficiencies.

Example 4: Multi-Language Support for Global Operations

Scenario: A multinational manufacturing company needs to rename attributes from local language systems to English for global reporting while maintaining local display names for regional teams.

Settings:

Attribute Name: fecha_produccion
New Attribute Name: ProductionDate
New Attribute Display Name: Production Date

Output: The Spanish attribute "fecha_produccion" is renamed to the standardized English "ProductionDate" for global reporting and integration. The display name "Production Date" appears in all visualizations. Regional teams can still reference the original name in their local reports if needed.

Insights: Standardized English attribute names enable global process mining initiatives while the display name feature ensures local teams can work with familiar terminology in their reports.

Example 5: Cleaning Up Legacy System Names

Scenario: After a system migration, your finance dataset contains outdated attribute names like "OLD_GL_ACCT_2019_FINAL" that no longer reflect the current chart of accounts structure.

Settings:

Attribute Name: OLD_GL_ACCT_2019_FINAL
New Attribute Name: GLAccountNumber
New Attribute Display Name: G/L Account Number

Output: The legacy attribute name is replaced with the clean, current "GLAccountNumber" throughout the dataset. The display name "G/L Account Number" uses standard accounting terminology familiar to finance teams. All existing filters and calculations automatically update to use the new name.

Insights: Removing legacy naming artifacts reduces confusion and errors in financial process analysis, ensuring teams work with current, accurate terminology aligned with the active chart of accounts.

Output

The Change Attribute Name enrichment modifies the dataset's metadata without altering the underlying data values. The renamed attribute retains all its original properties including data type, values, and relationships with other attributes. The enrichment creates a permanent change to the attribute's identifier throughout the dataset schema.

When you specify only a New Attribute Name, this becomes both the technical identifier and the display label. When you also provide a New Attribute Display Name, the system maintains a separation between the technical name (used in formulas and filters) and the presentation name (shown in user interfaces).

All existing enrichments, filters, and calculators that reference the original attribute name are automatically updated to use the new name, ensuring backward compatibility. The rename operation is case-sensitive and validates that the new name doesn't conflict with existing attributes in the dataset.

Overview

Common Uses

Settings

Examples

Example 1: Standardizing SAP Field Names

Example 2: Consolidating Multi-System Data

Example 3: Creating Business-Friendly Healthcare Names

Example 4: Multi-Language Support for Global Operations

Example 5: Cleaning Up Legacy System Names

Output

See Also