Capture organization data

An organization describes an administrative or functional unit in the enterprise such as business units, divisions, regions and countries. An organization is not typically a legal entity but rather a business-driven governance structure to document roles and responsibilities and track roll-out plans. Organizations are supported in their business activities through the business support provided by applications.

Organizations form a self-referential hierarchy. An organizational hierarchy of 3 levels is sufficient for analysis in Alfabet FastLane.

Add organizations to the repository

Organizations are structured in a hierarchy. Before you begin, you should think about how you want to document the hierarchy of organizations.

In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Organizations to open the explorer for organizations.

Add an organization at the top-level of the hierarchy. Click the Organizations node and click the New button to open the wizard.

Add a subordinate organization. Click the parent organization in the explorer, go to the Overview tab and open the Subordinate Organizations view. Click New > Create New Organization.

Change the parent of an organization. In the Subordinate Organizations view, click New > Move Existing Organization Here to open a selector where you can chose the organization to move to the new parent organization.

Edit an organization. Select the checkbox for the organization you want to edit and click the Edit button to open the wizard.

Define the organization's basic data. Define the following fields and click Next to save your data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the organization and save it.

Name: (Mandatory) Enter a name for the organization. You can add an abbreviation (3-4 letters) of the name in the Short Name field to use in diagrams and other visualizations.
Short Name: (Recommended) Enter a short name of 3-4 letters that can be used for the description in diagrams and other visualizations.
Contact: (Recommended) Specify a person who is the contact person in the organization. The contact person must be a user in Alfabet FastLane.
user
A user is a person with a license to Alfabet FastLane. Users are bundled in user groups, which determines the access permission to an object.
Organization Type: (Recommended) Specify whether the organization is internal or external to your company.
Organization Scope: (Recommended) If you have selected External for the Organization Type attribute, specify whether the external organization is a solution partner, reseller partner, service provider, or technology provider.
Authorized Access tab: The user who creates the organization is the authorized user per default. This can be changed. Select one or more authorized user groups that shall have write permissions to the object. All users in the authorized user group can edit the organization.
authorized user
An authorized user has primary responsibility to maintain the data for an object. Typically this is the user that has created the object. The authorized user as well as members of authorized user groups have write permissions to objects they are responsible for.
authorized user group
An authorized user group is a set of users that have been granted write permissions to an object. More than one authorized user group may be specified for an object.

Specify applications that the organization uses

Ideally your company has documented its application. Applications should already be in the repository in order to define the applications that an organization uses. Some business questions in Alfabet FastLane can only be answered if the relationships between applications and organizations are defined.

Organizations are supported in their business activities by the business support provided by applications. For each application, you should specify the organization that uses it in order to understand the operational support in the company..

In the navigation panel, click Application Architecture > Applications to open the data workbench for applications.
In the data table, click the navigate button of the application you want to define. Click Business Portfolio and scroll to the Organizations Using Applications page and open it
Click New > Add Organizations Using Application. Select the applications that are used by the organization and click OK.

Define the users and organizations that have a role for the asset

In contrast to the concept of an authorized user or authorized user group which grants read/write permissions to an object, roles which are fulfilled by people or organizations may also be specified for an object. The role definition specifies the functional relationship or responsibility that a user or organization has to an object. The specification of a role is primarily for documentation purposes and provides additional information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the object. A person assigned to have a role for an object will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. If the user shall have read/write permissions, they must be assigned to an authorized user group specified for the object.

Alfabet FastLane provides out-of-the-box role types that enable you to understand who is responsible for your IT assets in your IT portfolio. Additional role types that are relevant for your company can also be added.

Assigning users and organizations to roles is critical to understanding responsibility for assets in the IT and is required to answer the business question Who is responsible for our assets?

To define the users and organizations that have a role for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. You can either:

Click the Edit button to open the wizard and select Responsibilities in the Go to Step field
In the data table, click the navigate button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Responsibilities page and open it.

Define the users that have a role for an asset. In the toolbar, click Person to associate a user with the asset. The user can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the asset.
Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

In the selector, find the user to assign the role to and click OK.

Define the organizations that have a role for an asset. In the toolbar, click Organization to associate an organization with the asset. The user can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
Operations: An IT organization responsible for the operations of the asset.
Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

In the selector, find the organization to assign the role to and click OK.

Attach documents and URLs to the asset

You can attach documents to objects in Alfabet FastLane in the Attachments view available in object profiles.

To define a generic attribute for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Attachments page and open it.

Upload a document to the asset.

Click New > Add Document. Select the file from your local drive and click Upload. The document is displayed in the data table.

Note that when you upload a document, you must ensure that the document is not encrypted. Encryption might be caused by Microsoft™ Information Protection. Only documents with the sensitivity label "Public" can be uploaded. Other reasons for encryption might also apply due to your company's security policies.
The following file types are allowed: .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, .zip, .png, .jpg, and .json The following file types are not allowed: .exe, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .txt, .xml, .wsdl, .html, .svg

Add a URL to the asset. You can define a URL for the selected object. The user must have access permissions to the document and have access to the network path specified in the link and, typically, be in the same network domain.

Title: Enter a meaningful title for the URL link to help users understand why you included this URL with the selected object.
URL: Enter a valid URL starting with the prefix https://www. or http://www. The URL link may contain up to 511 characters. The user’s Windows® environment must be able to identify the document extension and identify the correct application to open the document. A validation will be executed to ensure that a new URL is well-formatted and does not contain a period <.> without a leading or trailing blank space.

The following browsers support opening the files via the Web link definition in Alfabet FastLane: Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 11.0 and Microsoft® Edge® in conjunction with Windows® 10. Mozilla® Firefox® 24.0 or higher including Mozilla® Firefox® Quantum are also supported but require additional configuration in the browser settings.