Documentation Types
C3.ai keeps two types of documentation. First is that available on their documentation website: https://developer.c3.ai/documentation?version=3
Second is available only from within a running C3.ai instance. This can be accessed primarily through the static console by running the
command 'c3ShowType(<TypeOfInterest>)'.
Developer Documentation Site
This expansive set of documentation is split into two major sections on the front page. First, is the Featured section which contains
several very useful guides. At the time of this writing, they are:
- Release notes for 7.12
- Getting Started with C3 AI Suite
- C3 AI Suite Administration
- C3 AI Suite Security Guide
Second is the search bar and results. Here, you can type a topic or Type in, and get mostly relevant articles for that Type or topic.
For DTI users, the most useful documentation will be the Getting Started with C3 AI Suite guide. This guide provides a reasonable introduction
to the C3 AI suite which users can leverage along with DTI provided examples to prepare for their research on their eventual C3 research instance.
For general topics such as evaluating Metrics, we recommend opening the Getting Started guide and searching for the topic you're interested in
either through Ctrl+F (Find) or by inspecting the table of contents. If you can't find exactly what you're looking for, next try typing your topic into
the search bar as this may sometimes surface a relevant article. If you still can't find information on the topic you're interested in, open
a ticket with the DTI asking for more information by emailing help@c3dti.ai. Describe the topic you think is lacking a description, and we'll
either provide an explanation on this training guide somewhere, or prompt C3 to augment their documentation.
When looking at type information through the search function, only basic C3 Types will be available. All types you defined yourself in a C3 instance
will not be available. That said, Documentation on the base Types is often very helpful. Each Type entry contains a short description,
a list of types the type mixes in, the annotations defined on it, and a list of properties and methods along with where those methods came
from if they were inherited. Initially, the method descriptions are in a 'collapsed' state, and clicking on a method you're interested in should
expand it to provide a description along with a definition of the functions signature along with a list of arguments and expected values for
those arguments if necessary.
Static Console Documentation
If you have access to a running C3.ai instance, several additional documentation sources are available to you. In the upper left a menu labeled
'Help' exposes links to 'Console' command documentation as well as http documentation similar to that hosted on their main documentation
website. We've found the DTI official documentation hosted on their website to be better than this documentation.
Finally, documentation for any type can be access through the browser console by running the command 'c3ShowType(<TypeOfInterest>)'.
This will display a page giving a description of the type, links to the types it inherits, a list of annotations which are declared on it, and a list of
functions and properties either unique to that type or inherited through other types. Each property and function is described with a type or call
signature along with a description of that property and function.
Base C3 Types
The C3.ai platform comes with a number of built-in types which are used throughout, and are available in all C3.ai instances. These types all have
documentation accessible through the main C3.ai developer documentation here.
Some notable examples of such types include:
Caveats
- When browsing the searchable C3 hosted documentation, be careful that the pages you navigate to are for the right version of C3. Pages geneally
have URLs like the following: https://developer.c3.ai/docs/7.12.0/type/Persistable. Notice, the presence of the version as '7.12.0'. Sometimes
using the search function will bring up links to documentation of version 7.9. This isn't mentioned explicitly and the often the only clue is the
different version in the URL. If you do land on a page for 7.9, you can often replace that with '7.12.0' as shown above and get an equivalent page
for the 7.12 version of C3.