Topology Discovery

Before building any view, Trendz must scan your ThingsBoard instance to learn which asset types, device types, fields, and relations exist. This scan is called Topology Discovery, and its result is the set of Business Entities that appear in the field picker when you build analytics views.

Full Discovery performs a complete scan of your ThingsBoard instance from scratch. Run it once on first setup, and again whenever you add new entity profile types or significantly restructure your entity hierarchy.

1. Navigate to the Business Entities page using the icon in the bottom-left corner.
2. Click Refresh Topology.
3. Wait until Full Discovery completes.
4. Click Finish.

Click the Business Entities icon in the bottom-left corner. Click Refresh Topology to start a full scan. Trendz scans all asset types, device types, fields, and relations. Click Finish once discovery completes.

Full Discovery runs the following sequence:

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  ThingsBoard                            │
  │                                         │
  │  Asset types + Device types             │
  │              │                          │
  │              ▼                          │
  │  Sample entities per type               │
  │              │                          │
  │              ▼                          │
  │  Discover fields (attrs + telemetry)    │
  │              │                          │
  │              ▼                          │
  │  Discover relations between types       │
  └──────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
                 ▼
     Business Entities in Trendz

Sampling limits the number of entities analyzed per type to keep discovery fast on large installations. Every discovered entity always includes the mandatory fields ENTITY_ID, ENTITY_NAME, ENTITY_LABEL, and OWNER.

See Configuration Properties — Topology Discovery for the full reference.

Lite Discovery runs automatically in the background and keeps Business Entities current without any manual intervention. New entity profile types and field changes are picked up continuously as Trendz receives API requests.

Each incoming API call triggers a lightweight check. Trendz decides whether to run discovery and which mode to use based on cooldowns and what has changed:

  DISCOVER_NEW cooldown elapsed?  ──No──▶  (skip)
       │ Yes
       ▼
  new types in TB (not in topology)?
       │
       ├── Yes ──▶  DISCOVER_NEW
       │            new profile types only
       │
       └── No  ──▶  REFRESH_OLD cooldown elapsed?  ──No──▶  (skip)
                         │ Yes
                         ▼
                    REFRESH_OLD
                    N oldest types first

Both modes execute the same three phases:

  Phase 1 — Schema    discover field keys
  Phase 2 — Relations discover links between entity types
  Phase 3 — Types     resolve field types (numeric/bool/string)

The cooldowns are 5 minutes for DISCOVER_NEW and 10 minutes for REFRESH_OLD.