Application portfolios are defined in Alfabet FastLane via application groups that bundle applications. Each application can be assigned to multiple groups. The applications should be bundled in relevant application groups that are relevant to the goals for the portfolio assessment process. For example, applications could be logically structured in application groups according to:

• the high-level business processes that the applications support.

  business process

  A business process is a set of activities that represent work required to achieve a business objective. Marketing services, selling products, delivering services, distributing products, invoicing for services, and accounting for money received are examples of business processes.

• the organizations that the applications support

  organization

  An organization describes an administrative or functional unit in the enterprise.

• the organizations that are responsible for the operation and maintenance of the applications
• the technology that the applications use
• or any other ad-hoc assessments of segments of the IT landscape

In the navigation panel, click Application Architecture > Application Groups to open the explorer for application groups.​

Add an application group at the top-level of the hierarchy. Click the Applications by Group node of the explorer and open the Root Application Groups view. Click the New button to open the wizard.

Add a subordinate application group. Click the parent application group in the explorer, go to the Overview tab and open the Subordinate Application Group view. Click New > Create New Application Group.

Change the parent of an application group. In the Subordinate Application Groups view, click New > Move Existing Application Group Here to open a selector where you can chose the application group to move to the new parent application group.

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

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

• Name: (Mandatory) Enter a name for the application group. You can add an abbreviation (3-4 letters) of the name in the Short Name field to use in diagrams and other visualizations.
• Type: Specify a group type that is used for analysis in analytics dashboards and data workbenches.
  • Project: Application group with appliations used to achieve a milestone in a set amount of time. Application groups of type Project allow for KPI analysis of all grouped applications.
  • Building Block: Application group with applications that are used to describe reference architectures of a specific solution.
  • User Group: Application group with applications that are used by the same set of users in an organization.
• Icon: Choose an icon to visualize the location in diagrams and other visualizations.
• Authorized Access tab: The user who creates the application group 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 application group.

  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.

Every application should be assigned to at lease one application group in order to assess the applications in various contexts.

1. In the navigation panel, click Application Architecture > Application Groups to open the explorer for application groups.​
2. In the explorer, click the application group you want to define. Click Application Portfolio and scroll to the Applications page and open it.
3. Click New > Create an Application to add a new application to the application group or Add an Existing Application to add an application in the repository to the application group.

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.

A generic attribute is a custom attribute that allows the ad-hoc capture of information for an asset. An administrator user may have already created predefined custom attributes that are relevant for an object class. The preconfigured generic attribute can be added to an asset (object) of the respective object class. For example, the generic attribute Rationalization Status could be configured to capture whether an application is in the scope of rationalization activities. Thus it would be assigned to the class Application with a default value set to False. As an authorized user of an application, you can add this attribute to your application and change the value if you want to.

You may also create your own generic attributes for an asset you are working with. You can also copy generic attributes created for other assets of the same class as the one you are working with and change the value.

in the context of the Generic Attributes view for the object.

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 Generic Attributes page and open it.

Add a preconfigured generic attribute to the asset. Click New > Add Generic Attributes from Class Configuration. Change the default value in the Value field as needed. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field.

Create a new generic attribute for the asset. Click New > Create New Generic Attribute. Define the following fields and click OK:

• Name: Enter a name that is easy for other users to understand.
• Type: Select the type of property that the generic attribute is. The field will display standard property types and enumerations. If you select an enumeration, the enumeration values will be displayed in the Value field.
• Value: Specify the attribute value for the selected object class. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field. Other users might copy this attribute. The value you define will be the default value but they will be able to change it for their asset.

Copy an existing generic attribute from an asset based on the same object class. Click New > Copy Existing Generic Attributes. In the selector, select the assets that have the generic attributes you want to copy to your asset and click OK. You can change the value as needed.

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.