Keel glossary

Every Keel term in one place. Concepts explains how they fit together.

Term	Definition
Agent	A Surogate agent of the project, made in Studio. It can work a step, draft a step for a person, take work items as a queue member or a delegate, or start cases as an intake agent.
Agent question	An agent’s raised hand as it shows in work lists.
Alternate stage	A stage off the primary path, such as Withdrawn, that a case reaches only when an outcome, a case event or a supervisor sends it there.
Authority limit	The most a person or an agent may approve in a scope. Supervisors set it on the Team page.
Authority check	A step’s rule that whoever completes it needs a limit in a scope at least as large as an amount field.
Builder	A member of the project in Surogate Studio, who signs in to Keel Builder as an owner, editor or viewer.
Business app	The Keel app where staff and supervisors work cases.
Business time	Time that counts only working hours on working days, by the case type’s calendar.
Calendar	A project’s working days, working hours, holidays and time zone. A case type can use one.
Case	One running instance of a case type version, with its data, files and history.
Case agent	The project’s helper that answers a person’s questions about one case or one process instance, and fills in their form when they ask. It never submits.
Case event	A named signal another system sends to a case. A wait for it moves on; otherwise the case type’s event of that name fires.
Case number	The case type’s number prefix and a count, such as LR-000001.
Case type	The definition of one kind of case: its fields, stages, flows, forms and settings. Versioned.
Check	A condition a step’s result must meet, with the message people see when it does not.
Claim	Taking an unclaimed item from one of your queues, so it is yours.
Condition	An expression in CEL over the case’s fields, used by checks, decisions, rules, waits and optional actions.
Connection	Another system a case type’s system steps call: its base URL, authentication and credential.
Credential	The secret a connection sends. Set on the published connection, never shown again.
Decision	A node that picks a branch from conditions over the case’s data.
Delegate	Handing an item you hold to someone else on the staff, or to an agent.
Designer agent	The project’s helper that drafts case types and processes with a builder in Keel Builder, in the open draft. It never publishes.
Draft	A set of changes to the project’s definitions, not live until published.
Dry run	Every publish check and scenario, run on a draft without publishing it.
Effect	Work Keel does outside a case after a transition: starting an agent, or calling a system.
Escalation	An item that opens in a queue when a service level’s deadline passes. The step stays with whoever works it.
Field	One piece of a case’s data, with a name, a label and a type.
Flow	The nodes of a stage and how its outcomes connect them.
Form	What a person fills to start a case or complete a step, made from fields and laid out on the Forms tab.
Get next	The button that gives you the first item of Needs me, or else the next unclaimed item of your queues.
Helper	One of the two agents Keel sets up for each project: the case agent and the designer agent. A helper never works a step or a work item.
Instance	One run of a BPMN process version, numbered P-000001 and up in its project. It runs on the version it started on until it is moved to the process’s current version.
Intake agent	An agent allowed to start cases of a case type.
Join	A node that waits until every path leading to it has arrived.
Maker-checker	A step’s rule that it must be done by someone other than whoever did named earlier steps.
Mapping	The part of a draft that says where the open cases of an older version go in the new version.
Needs attention	The Overview’s list of agents, waits and queues a supervisor should look at, each with a link to where to act.
Needs me	The list of work you hold, on the Work page.
Number prefix	The start of a case type’s case numbers.
Optional action	A step people can start from a case’s header, where the case type allows it.
Outcome	How a step, vote or wait ends, and where the case goes from there.
Overview	The supervisors’ page of the business app: the project’s figures, what needs attention, its case types and where cases wait. See The Overview.
Parallel split	A node that starts several paths at once.
Performer	Who does a step: an agent, a person or a queue, an agent with a person, or a system.
Pinned rule	A rule each case keeps at the version in effect when it started.
Primary stage	A stage of the normal path, shown as a column on the board.
Priority	A queue’s place among queues for Get next: lower numbers first.
Process	A BPMN 2.0 file among the project’s definitions, processes/<key>.bpmn, published through drafts and run beside case types. See BPMN processes.
Process agent	The case agent, on a process instance’s page, where it answers about the instance and fills in the form of a task you hold when you ask. It never submits.
Publish	Making a draft live. Each changed case type gets a new version.
Queue	A team’s shared list of work, with a serving order and a priority.
Raised hand	An agent’s question to a person, which pauses its step until someone answers.
Reassign	A supervisor giving an open work item, other than a vote, to someone on the staff or to an agent.
Resolution	How a case closed, such as approved or completed.
Rule	A decision table or scorecard, versioned by when each version takes effect.
Rule node	A node that runs a rule and writes its results into fields.
Scenario	A stored test of a case type: how a case starts, what happens, and what must hold.
Scope	The name of a kind of authority, such as lending.
Serving order	The order in which a queue hands out work: kinds first, then oldest or nearest deadline.
Service key	A key another system uses to start cases and send case events in the project.
Service level	A goal and a deadline on a step, a stage or a case, with an optional queue to escalate to.
Session	An agent’s run of one step or work item, with a record of what it did. Watch shows an agent’s own step read-only; builders list an agent’s sessions on the Agents page.
Staff	The people of a project who sign in to the business app.
Stage	A phase of a case. A case is always in one stage.
Step	Work in a stage, done by its performer, which ends with an outcome.
Stuck timer	A process instance’s timer whose firing failed. It is never fired again; the instance shows why, and a supervisor cancels the instance.
Supervisor	Staff who also run the Team page, read the Overview and move cases by hand.
Version	One published state of a case type. A case stays on the version it started on unless it is moved.
Vote	A step decided when enough members of a queue choose the same outcome.
Wait	A node that holds a case until an event, a time or a condition, with an optional limit.
Warning	Something the checks found that Keel ignores and never runs, such as a vendor extension in a process file. It never stops a publish.
Watch	The read-only view of an agent’s session on a step.
Work item	An item in someone’s work or a queue: a step, a vote, an agent question or an escalation.