Demo data

Fill a company with a realistic industry story, so every screen has something in it, and put back exactly what was there before with one click.

Demo data fills a company with a full, coherent industry story: items with BOMs and routings, customers and suppliers, quotes, orders, jobs, inspections, change orders and ledger entries. Every list screen has rows and every detail screen opens, which makes it the fastest way to explore Carbon, demo it, or test against realistic data. You apply it from Settings → Demo Data, or pick it at sign-up as "Use a demo template".

The templates

Each template tells one industry's story, end to end, across sales, purchasing, production, quality and accounting:

FieldType
A satellite manufacturer, from RFQs through built and inspected flight hardware.
A robotics maker building assemblies to order.
A machine shop quoting and cutting precision parts.
An automotive supplier assembling motors.

Every seeded date is relative to the day you apply the template, so the company always looks live: recent orders, jobs in progress, upcoming due dates. Parts come with real thumbnails, and each industry includes a 3D assembly you can open in the viewer.

NOTE

A template is not a backup

Demo data is seeded fresh from Carbon's own dataset definitions each time, not imported from a stored backup file. That's why it always matches the current version of the app. To stand a company up from another company's actual data, use a backup instead.

Apply a template

On Settings → Demo Data, the "Apply a demo template" card lists the templates; select "Apply" on one. It is safe to try on a company that already has data: Carbon saves a copy of your current data first, then replaces it with the demo story. The page shows each phase as it runs, from "Saving a copy of your current data" through "Adding demo records", and it keeps running if you leave the page.

Applying a template snapshots the company first, then seeds the industry story.

When it finishes, the "Demo data applied" card asks you to decide:

  • "Keep" accepts the demo data.
  • "Revert" puts back exactly what was here before.

The choice stays open until you make it, and only one demo-data change can be in flight per company. Applying is all-or-nothing: if anything fails partway, no rows are written and the card shows the error with a "Dismiss" button.

TIP

Revert works even after a hiccup

If a revert seems stuck, the card says so after a few minutes and offers "Retry revert". The saved copy of your data is kept until the revert succeeds, so retrying is always safe.

Demo data at sign-up

The same templates power onboarding. When Carbon staff create a new company, the data step asks "How would you like to start?":

FieldType
Sets up sample customers, suppliers, parts and orders for the industry you pick. They appear shortly after you finish.
Sets the new company up from an uploaded Carbon backup of another company.
Starts with a clean, empty environment.

Choosing a template then asks "Which best describes your company?" and seeds the matching industry. See Getting started for the rest of the wizard.

NOTE

Who can see this page

Demo Data sits behind the same gate as Backups, since it replaces a company's data wholesale. On production deployments it is currently limited to Carbon staff; on a local development stack it is open to everyone.