# Simple Data Items

&#x20;When you look at a department that can be personalised e.g. Council Tax, which is capable of retrieving data about people, financial and property-based data, there will be a section in OneVu control called ‘Data Items’.

![Data Items - Logical Groupings of Data Available in Northgate Council Tax](https://3978362562-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MgKIYotuJ2G9zOHXIfg%2F-MgPUGB4W-fYEkRxRBk_%2F-MgPXllT3SbJUMQVx2xh%2FScreenshot%202021-08-06%20at%2009.18.39.png?alt=media\&token=2c8c0eb8-6afb-4f14-bd26-f09c8180d789)

Data items are effectively pieces of data that can be retrieved from a back office application.&#x20;

The simplest of data items to work with are items that have a specific value. For example council tax band, next benefit  payment amount, licence expiry date are simple examples of data items. If you open the Data Items section for a department there are relatively logical groupings.

&#x20;If you expand one of these we can see fields of data that we might use to answer a question/shown the citizen. E.g. you might see a data item for Band within a PropertyDetail section.&#x20;

![Expanded Data Item Section Showing Available Data Items](https://3978362562-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MgKIYotuJ2G9zOHXIfg%2F-MgPUGB4W-fYEkRxRBk_%2F-MgPYYteiRSS6C6YhVV_%2FScreenshot%202021-08-06%20at%2009.22.09.png?alt=media\&token=7f6e2661-badc-4e78-a6df-ae0ccefc582a)

So if we wanted to show this data within OneVu to citizens, it is as simple as clicking the burgundy button with the copy/paste icon on it below the 'Path' column. Then pasting the copied content into a Data Tile:

![Illustrating a Data Item present in content](https://3978362562-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MgKIYotuJ2G9zOHXIfg%2F-MgPUGB4W-fYEkRxRBk_%2F-MgPZiPWzAAa5Uh7dJn_%2FScreenshot%202021-08-06%20at%2009.27.14.png?alt=media\&token=74465ea4-5907-4e64-89f8-82740454053c)

&#x20;As you can see when you paste a Data Item in, it is surrounded by these bits of text: ${     }. These go around data items so OneVu knows to distinguish them from regular text.&#x20;

Whilst you can always use the copy/paste mechanism, it is possible to work the format of a token out based upon the section it is in.&#x20;

E.g. when one expands the Data Item Grouping called AccountDetails, there is another expandable section called Balance. Inside that is a data item called AccountBalance. So because the hierarchy is:

**AccountDetail** > **Balance** > **AccountBalance**  the format of the data item would be:

```
${AccountDetail.Balance.AccountBalance}
```



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