Path | Duration | Level | Before you start |
🟢 Fundamentals | 20 min | Starter | None |
Before touching anything, it's worth understanding how Mairu is designed. Most of the questions beginners have ("is this an entity or a form?", "why doesn't this data show up somewhere else?") disappear once you're clear on which piece does what.
🎯 By the end you'll know
How to explain what Mairu is and what problem it solves.
How to tell apart the main pieces: master data, forms, responses, statuses, rules, events, queries, schedules, dashboards and Power BI.
Which piece to use for a specific need.
🧠 The idea: a process, not a form
Mairu is a no-code platform to digitalize industrial processes. The important word in that sentence is processes: a form only collects information, but a process has a before (what needs to be done and by whom), a during (recording the data) and an after (alerting, following up, analyzing).
Mairu has a piece for each of those phases. Picture it as an information factory:
REFERENCE DATA → CAPTURE → REACTION → FOLLOW-UP → ANALYSIS (what you already know) (what happens) (what to do) (how it's going) (what I learn)
1. Reference data: the master data
This is the stable information that gets reused across many processes: your machines, your products, your users, your customers. It is created once in Settings and then selected from the forms, instead of being typed by hand every time.
Master data | Represents | Example |
Assets | Physical assets, organized in a hierarchy | Area → Line → Machine |
Products and Product types | What you manufacture, consume or store (with stock) | Raw material, finished product |
Users, Departments and Job positions | The people and the organization | Quality → Quality technician |
Entities | Any other reusable list | Suppliers, shifts, priorities, rejection reasons |
Statuses and Status groups | The phases a record goes through | Pending → In progress → Completed |
💡 An Entity is not "filled in" day to day. It is a reference catalog that feeds the forms. This is the most common confusion when starting out: if it's a list that gets reused, it's an Entity; if it's something someone records every time it happens, it's a Form.
2. Capture: forms, subforms and responses
A Form is what a user fills in to record an activity: an inspection, an incident, a control.
Every time someone fills it in, a Response is generated. All the responses of a form make up its history.
A Subform is a form inside another one, to record several detail lines within a single response (for example, each of the weighings in a control).
3. Reaction: rules, events and automations
These three pieces are often confused. The difference is when they act:
Piece | When it acts | What for | Example |
Rules | While the form is being filled in | Adapt the form: show, hide, make required, calculate | If the control is NOT OK → show Corrective action |
Events | When the response is saved | Make something happen afterwards | If the control is NOT OK → send an email to Quality |
Automations | Periodically, without anyone saving anything | Review the data and act | Every day, alert about equipment not reviewed |
4. Follow-up: statuses, schedules and dashboards
Statuses tell you at what point each response is.
Schedules generate tasks (forms that must be completed on a date or at a recurring interval) and assign them to people, departments or job positions.
Dashboards are each user's home screen: tasks, shortcuts, indicators and listings.
5. Analysis and connection: queries, Power BI and integrations
Queries retrieve data already recorded to reuse it: fill in a field, calculate an indicator, show a listing.
Power BI lets you build reports over one or several forms.
The API, Webhooks and imports connect Mairu with other systems (ERP, MES, CMMS…).
🛠️ Guided practice: sketch your process before building it
In this lesson nothing is configured. The exercise is to think through the process of the Packaging control (the case used in all the lessons) and assign each need to its Mairu piece.
Read the description and complete the table in your head:
Every shift a packaging control is carried out on the lines. The operator chooses the line, the product and the shift, records the batch, takes five weighings and measures the temperature. If the control is NOT OK, they have to explain the corrective action and the quality manager must receive an email. Quality wants to see the average weight of each control, have the pending controls on their home screen and analyze the weight trend per line each month.
Need | Mairu piece |
Choose the line | Asset (Asset selector) |
Choose the product | Product (Product selector) |
Choose the shift | Shifts Entity (Entity selector) |
Five weighings | Weighings subform with a single Weight field |
Show Corrective action only if NOT OK | Rule |
Email to Quality if NOT OK | Send email event |
Average weight of each control | Indicator query |
A control each shift | Schedule |
Pending controls on the home screen | Dashboard with a Tasks widget |
Monthly weight trend per line | Power BI |
💡 This habit, process first, tools second, is Mairu's most important best practice. See Design a complete process in Mairu, not just a form.
🔍 Check that you've understood
Answer without looking above:
You have a list of 300 suppliers that appears in five forms. Where do you store it?
You want the Stoppage duration field to appear only if there was a stoppage. Rule, event or automation?
You want an email every Monday with the overdue inspections. Rule, event or automation?
In a control you record ten temperature measurements. Ten fields or a subform?
See answers
In a Suppliers Entity, used with an Entity selector.
Rule: it acts while the form is being filled in.
Automation: it acts periodically, without anyone saving anything.
Subform with a single Temperature field: that way you'll be able to calculate averages, maximums and charts (you'll see this in lesson 6).
⚠️ Common mistakes
Starting with the form. You end up with an enormous form that alerts no one and can't be analyzed. Sketch the complete process first.
Typing by hand what is already master data. If users type the machine name, you'll have "Line 1", "line1" and "L1" in the history and nothing will add up in the reports.
Using events to change the form. What should happen while it's being filled in is a rule; what happens after saving is an event.
🏋️ Challenge
Pick a real process at your company (an incident, an audit, a purchase request…) and make the same Need → Mairu piece table. Save it: you'll use it in the final project.
📚 Learn more
Entity, Form and Subform - when to use each
➡️ Next lesson: Working with Mairu as a user