When you create a component definition, you can automatically plug the component definition into a view by defining plug-in paths to one or several containers. A plug-in path is a unique string that describes the plug-in area. Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) provides helper classes with string constants to plug-in to an area without having to type the plug-in area as a string. For example, you can add the following code to your component:

## Plug in component hierarchies

You can plug entire component hierarchies in by adding children to the top-level component that you create in the `CreateComponent` method. The following example shows how to plug in a new tab to the dashboard with two components:

In this example, other plug-ins can plug into the new tab due to the definition of _PlugInPath = "/samples/dashboard/mycustomtab"_. Use a special component definition class that creates a root component (that does not have a reference to the component definition of the hierarchy) because the `CreateComponent` method is called when creating new views and also when loading a personalized hierarchy.