Demo Mode
How Planara generates realistic mock data for new tenants — queue jobs, telemetry, service history — so the platform looks populated from the first login.
The cold start problem
A new tenant with no DMS integration and no ingested documents sees an empty dashboard — no queue jobs, no telemetry, no service history. This makes it impossible to demonstrate the full workflow during sales presentations or evaluation periods.
Demo mode solves this by auto-generating realistic mock data when a tenant is provisioned.
What gets generated
When demo mode is enabled during tenant provisioning, the system creates:
Queue jobs
5-8 work orders with varied statuses (pending assessment, in progress, awaiting parts, completed). Each job has:
- A realistic equipment reference matching the tenant's registered models
- Complaint text based on common failure modes for that equipment type
- Fault codes (where applicable)
- Technician assignments
- Timestamps distributed across the last 7 days
Telemetry readings
Simulated gauge values for each registered equipment model:
- Engine RPM, coolant temperature, oil pressure, battery voltage
- Values within normal operating range with occasional warning-level readings to demonstrate the alert system
Service history
10-15 historical service records spanning the last 90 days, showing a mix of routine maintenance and repair work. This populates the service history context stream so the AI can reference prior work during conversations.
How it works
Demo data is generated by an AI model that understands the equipment domain for the tenant's manufacturer. The model produces contextually appropriate data — a marine engine tenant gets marine-specific complaints, fault codes, and service types. A construction equipment tenant would get construction-specific data.
All demo data records are tagged with a demo: true flag in the database. They are:
- Visually indistinguishable from real data in the UI (so demos look realistic)
- Excluded from analytics and adoption metrics (so they do not skew real usage data)
- Automatically superseded when real DMS data flows in (real jobs take priority in the queue view)
When to use demo mode
| Scenario | Enable demo mode? |
|---|---|
| Sales demo to a prospect | Yes |
| Customer evaluation / proof of concept | Yes |
| Internal testing and development | Yes |
| Production deployment with DMS integration | No |
| Production deployment without DMS (manual job creation) | Optional |
Disabling demo data
Demo data persists until explicitly removed. To clear demo data for a tenant, use the backoffice Settings page or the CLI demo-data clearing command, scoped to the tenant namespace.
This removes all records tagged demo: true without affecting real data.
Related
- Tenant Provisioning — creating a new tenant with or without demo data
- Customer Onboarding Guide — the full onboarding playbook
- Dashboard Configuration — configuring what technicians see on the dashboard