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Introducing the Metamodel


What is the Metamodel?

The metamodel is the foundational architecture of your organisation within Boldo. It is a definition system that enables you to create the conceptual structure of your organisational inventory. Simply put, the metamodel is the "model that defines your models" – your personal framework for organising, categorising, and interconnecting all the elements of your business ecosystem.

Unlike rigid solutions that impose predefined structures, Boldo’s metamodel gives you complete flexibility to tailor the tool to your organisational reality. You are no longer restricted by the limitations of generic software; instead, you sculpt your own digital working environment that faithfully reflects the complexity and specificity of your organisation.

The metamodel acts as a shared language within your organisation. Once defined, it ensures all users speak the same language, use the same terminology, and structure information consistently. This natural standardisation eliminates ambiguity and inconsistencies that often arise when different teams use divergent approaches to catalogue their assets.

The Metamodel principle

An ontological approach

The metamodel is based on an ontological approach – it enables you to define what exists in your organisation and how these elements relate to one another. This philosophical stance acknowledges that each organisation has its own reality, its own concepts, and its own ways of understanding and structuring its working environment.

By defining your metamodel, you're engaging in conceptual modelling that goes far beyond simple form creation. You're establishing the epistemological foundations of your information system, defining your organisational taxonomy, and creating a controlled vocabulary that will serve as a reference for all asset management activities.


An evolving dimension

The metamodel is not a static framework frozen in time. It is designed to evolve with your organisation. Your business needs change, your processes improve, your technology modernises, and your understanding of your own ecosystem deepens. The metamodel supports this natural evolution by allowing you to adjust, enrich, and refine your definitions over time.

This ability to adapt means your investment in defining the metamodel never becomes obsolete. On the contrary, the more you use and refine it, the more valuable it becomes and the better it reflects the sophistication of your organisation.

The four components of the Metamodel

1. Asset types – your ontological categories

Asset types represent the fundamental entities your organisation recognises and manages. Each type is a conceptual class that defines a coherent set of elements sharing common characteristics and playing similar roles within your organisational ecosystem.

Defining an asset type goes far beyond simple labelling. It requires deep reflection on the ontological nature of the entity: what defines this category? What are its essential characteristics? How does it differ from others? What is its role in the organisation’s overall ecosystem?

Each asset type has its own identifying attributes: a clear name, a description defining its scope and features, a visual representation (icon and colour) for easier cognitive recognition, and a position in the organisational hierarchy of asset types.

→ Explore Assets – Complete guide to creating and configuring your asset types and properties.


2. Properties – your descriptive system

Properties are the descriptive system that allows you to precisely characterise each instance of your asset types. A property is a semantic attribute capturing a specific facet of the information you consider relevant for describing, analysing, and managing your assets.

Defining properties involves several strategic considerations:

  • The granularity of information – what level of detail is needed?
  • The temporality – are these values stable or subject to change?
  • The intended use – will they support search, analysis, decision-making, or regulatory compliance?

Boldo’s property system provides rich typology, enabling you to capture the diversity of organisational data:

  • Textual (descriptions)
  • Numerical (metrics)
  • Temporal (lifecycles)
  • Boolean (binary states)
  • Enumerated (standardised values)
  • Evaluative (qualitative assessments)

→ Manage Properties – Discover all property types and how to configure them.


3. Relationships between assets – your systemic model

Relationships form the backbone of your conceptual model. They define how your assets interact, connect, influence, and coordinate within your organisational ecosystem. Relationships transform your inventory from a flat list of isolated elements into a rich, interconnected semantic network.

Modelling relationships requires systemic thinking about the nature of interactions within your organisation. Each relationship you define should capture a meaningful organisational reality: a functional dependency, an information flow, a governance hierarchy, operational collaboration, or any other relevant interaction in your business context.

→ Configure Relationships – Learn how to model connections in your organisation.


4. Relationship types – your relational vocabulary

Relationship types define the specific nature of interactions between your assets. They create your organisation’s relational semantics – the language used to express how different elements are connected.

Each type of relationship has its own semantic and visual identity: a name that clearly conveys the nature of the link, a colour for visual recognition, and graphical properties (arrow styles, line types) that enhance the intuitive understanding of your diagrams.

→ Define Relationships – Create your own custom relational vocabulary.

Accessing the Metamodel

Only organisation administrators have the necessary privileges to modify the metamodel. This restriction acknowledges the critical impact that changes to the metamodel can have on the organisation’s entire information ecosystem.

Access to the metamodel is available through Boldo’s organisation administration interface.

Access path:

  • Go to Organisation Settings from the main menu
  • Select the Metamodel section from the side navigation
  • Open the Assets tab to manage your asset types, their properties, and relationships
  • Use the Relationships tab to configure your relationship types

Best practices for an effective Metamodel

1. Start incrementally

Building an effective metamodel requires a step-by-step approach, balancing conceptual ambition with operational reality. Start by identifying your three to five most critical asset types, and limit yourself to essential, stable properties to ease adoption and reduce maintenance complexity.

Continue enriching the metamodel as your organisational maturity grows:

  • Add new asset types when their management becomes essential
  • Introduce new properties when analysis requires them
  • Create new relationships when modelling them adds clear value


2. Design for change

Your metamodel should be designed as an evolving system that can adapt to organisational, technological, and strategic changes. Plan for future evolution without over-designing the present. Document your design decisions and establish conventions that remain coherent over time.


3. Foster collaboration

A technically perfect metamodel that is ignored by users is a failure. Organisational adoption requires a collaborative approach: involve future users in the design, validate key conceptual choices with operational teams, and ensure terminology aligns with existing practices.


4. Manage changes with care

Changes to the metamodel can have cascading effects across your entire information ecosystem. Plan major updates as a team, assess the impact on existing data, communicate changes in advance, and test in a restricted scope before rolling out broadly.

→ Understand the Full Impact of Changes – Detailed guide on cascading effects when modifying the metamodel.

Next Steps

→ Explore Assets – Learn how to create and configure your asset types and their specific properties
→ Discover Relationships – Master how to model connections and interactions in your organisation