Context Definition (RCA)

 What Is a Context Definition?

A Context Definition is a metadata-driven structure used to pass data into Revenue Cloud services in a consistent and reusable way. It is defined by a set of core building blocks -

1. Nodes – Containers for attributes mapped to Salesforce objects. Each node can hold multiple attributes.
2. Attributes – Containers for data, mapped directly to fields on an object.
3. Context Tags – Simple aliases for nodes and attributes, used by consuming applications to query context data easily.
4. Context Mappings – The link between nodes/attributes and input data sources. A single context definition can support multiple mappings to serve different use cases.
   

A context definition typically follows four stages:

1. Creation (Design time) – Defining nodes, attributes, tags, and mappings.
2. Hydration – Populating the definition with actual record data at runtime.
3. Consumption – Querying or transforming hydrated data.
4. Persistence – Writing any changes back into mapped objects.

Context Service APIs

The Context Service provides a set of Apex APIs to interact with context definitions. In this post, we’ll focus on hydration, retrieval, and querying.

• Build: Load data into a context.
• buildContext – Create a context instance at runtime.
• getContext – Retrieve details of an existing context.
• deleteContext – Delete a context instance.
• Query: Explore data within the context.
• queryContextRecordsAndChildren – Retrieve records and child records.
• queryTags – Retrieve tag values.
• Update: Modify an existing context.
• updateContextAttributes – Update data in the context.
• addRecordToContext – Add new data.
• Persist: Save context data back to the database.
• persistContext – Write hydrated context data to mapped objects.

Applications of Context Definitions

Context Definitions appear in many Revenue Cloud scenarios, including :

• Pricing Procedures – Passing quote and product information into the pricing engine.
• Product Discovery – Determining which products or services are eligible for a customer.
• Contracts & Assets – Handling renewals, asset-based ordering, and related conditions.

Consuming Context Definitions from Apex

From a developer’s perspective, consuming a Context Definition directly in Apex is useful when:

• Triggering Apex hooks within a procedure plan.
• Testing or validating changes made to a Context Definition.
• Building custom solutions that consume or share a hydrated context.
  

Instead of writing SOQL queries and reproducing mappings manually, you can rely on the Context Service APIs to tap into hydrated data directly.