# Flow zone presentation
 
The [inputs zone](flow_zone:2mcxQDH) is dedicated to the ingestion of your transactions table. 
It is the backstage of the Dataiku application *Inputs* section ([See the corresponding wiki article](article:49)).
 
It contains the [transactions_dataset](dataset:transactions_dataset): it is a **mandatory** dataset, at the core of the project, that contains the information or your transactions history. 

![inputs_zone.png](RoljuFywpMQi)
 
**Dataset Granularity**: 1 row =  The information of ***an item*** (item identifier column | [What is an item ?](article:20)) ***purchased in a transaction*** (transaction identifier column) ***at a given date***(dates column).
Optionally, a row can also have the information of : 
- ***The customer*** (customer identifier column) that purchased the transaction. That field becomes mandatory if you want to compute recommendations for your customers. 
- ***Transaction context information***  [Learn more about the transaction context](article:30).
 
The dataset below illustrates the expected format in terms of columns : 
![transactions_dataset.png](BVEy7emz8szm)
- The item identifier column is ***Description***.
  - Here ***Description***  gives the information of a product name (thus, an item is a product). In the first row, the
  product that was purchased was "WHITE HANGING HEART T-LIGHT HOLDER".
- The transaction identifier column is ***InvoiceNo***.
  - Here the 7 first rows each belong to the same transaction, which has the ID "536365". 
- The transaction date column is ***InvoiceDate***.
  - Here the first transaction was done on "2010-12-01T08:26:00.000Z"
 
Optionally we have : 
- ***CustomerID*** as a customer identifier column.
- ***Country*** as a column giving transaction context information.
 
 
