Signal

Signal is the raw input from an integration, with both data and meta-data. They are generally created by third-party integrations. In Clarify a signal is automatically created for each input ID. The time-series that belong to signals can not be queried in Clarify directly; they must be published as items first. When we do, we can edit meta-data on the items before or after publishing them. This provide us with the opportunity to better classify, label and clean-up the meta-data from our signals.

Items exist so that we can better clean-up information from our signals. If we where to edit signals directly, the integration may choose to overwrite our work the next time it writes meta-data. We should think of signals as being owned by the integration, not by us.

If your company have many integrations look at the Automated publishing items guide to learn how to create and maintain publishing rules as well as schedule automatic publishing of items from signals.

Normally one signal turn into one item. However it is possible to merge multiple signals into one item, this is done by linking a signal to an existing item. When they are merged the data from both signals become available through the same item. If they have overlapping timestamps the data from the last created signal is shown.