Capture location data

A location is a geographic place that could be, for example, a country, city, building, or even a room. Locations can be hierarchically defined. A physical server is assigned to a location, which represents the physical location. Documenting locations and their physical servers is critical for disaster recovery management.

Add locations to the repository

Locations are structured in a hierarchy. Before you begin, you should think about how you want to document the hierarchy of locations. For example, you could document countries as level 1, cities as level 2, buildings as level 2, and rooms as level 4.

In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Locations to open the explorer for locations.

Add a location at the top-level of the hierarchy. Click the Locations node and click the New button to open the wizard.

Add a subordinate location. Click the parent location in the explorer, go to the Overview tab and open the Sub-Locations view. Click New > Create New Location.

Change the parent of a location. In the Sub-Locations view, click New > Move Existing Location Here to open a selector where you can chose the location to move to the new parent location.

Edit a location. Select the checkbox for the location you want to edit and click the Edit button to open the wizard.

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

Name: (Mandatory) Enter a name for the location. You can add an abbreviation (3-4 letters) of the name in the Short Name field to use in diagrams and other visualizations.
Icon: Choose an icon to visualize the location in diagrams and other visualizations.
Authorized Access tab: The user who creates the location 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 location.
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.

Assign physical servers to locations

Ideally your company has documented its physical servers. Physical servers should already be in the repository in order to define the physical server that are available at your company's locations. Some business questions in Alfabet FastLane can only be answered if the relationships between physical servers and locations are defined.

Every physical server should be assigned to a location in order to understand which IT infrastructure is at risk in case of an outage.

In the navigation panel, click Technology Architecture > Physical Servers to open the data workbench for physical servers.
Select the checkbox for the physical server you want to edit and click the Edit button to open the wizard.
Select the location for the physical server in the Location field and click OK.

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

In Alfabet FastLane, responsibilities are documented via the concept of roles, whereby each role is based on a preconfigured role type or a custom role type defined by your company. In contrast to an authorized user who has read/write permissions, a person assigned a role for an asset will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. The role is primarily for documentation purposes to provide information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the asset. If the user should have read/write permissions, they must either be the authorized user of the asset or assigned to an authorized user group associated with the asset.

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, click the navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Responsibilities view and open it. Click in a column cell to open a selector to define a role for the asset. Depending on the role column, you may be able to select a person or an organization. Switch between Person or Organization in the selector.

A person 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.

An organization 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.

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. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Attachments view 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.