A reference table contains the standard versions of a set of business values. A reference table might contain public terms, such as telephone area codes or address abbreviations. Or, a reference table might contain values that are specific to an organization, such as employee codes or product codes. You can create reference tables in the Analyst tool, or you can ask a developer to create a reference table. You select a reference table from a project in the Model repository when you configure the condition or the action.

A reference table contains two or more columns. Each row in the table represents a single business value. A row might contain two or more identical values, or it might contain alternative versions of the same value, including incorrect values.

If you add the reference table to a condition, the condition compares the input data to the values in the first column in the reference table. If the condition finds an input value in the reference data, the condition applies the operator to the input data to determine the action to take.

If you add the reference table to an action, the action compares the input data to the values in the second or additional columns. If the action finds an input data value in the reference table, the action returns the value on the same row in the first column.