Capture vendor data
A well-established and functional vendor management system is an important part of technology portfolio management, leading to better planning of technology roadmaps for better governance of the enterprise technology portfolio. A vendor is a supplier of software purchased by the enterprise. The vendor can supply multiple technological components that are used in the company. For example, the vendor Oracle may provide the components Oracle Database 11g R2, Oracle WebLogic Server 12C, and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) 7.
You can manually capture vendors or via the import of components from the IT-Pedia® repository. Components can be imported based on IT products from ITPedia®. When components are imported, their vendors will also be automatically imported to Alfabet FastLane. The vendor that supplies the component will be specified based on the Manufacturer of the imported product. If the vendor already exists in the repository, the vendor will be automatically associated with the component. If the vendor does not yet exist in the repository, it will be automatically added to the repository along with the new component based on the Manufacturer. Click to find out how to import components and their vendors from IT-Pedia
In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Vendors to open the explorer and data workbench for vendors. Per default, the data workbench displays only a set of basic attributes. You can add more columns to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench or you can navigate to a vendor's content area and define it in more detail there. Click to learn about how to use data workbenches.
Add a new vendor. Click the root node of the explorer and click the New button. The edit panel opens on the right where you can define basic data.
Edit an existing vendor. Edit the vendor directly in the data table. Or select the checkbox 
for the vendor you want to edit and click the Edit 
button to open the edit panel.
Define the vendor's basic data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the vendor and save it.
- Name: Enter the vendor’s name.
- Short Name: Enter an abbreviated name for the vendor.
- Website: Enter the URL targeting the vendor's website.
- Description: Enter a meaningful description that will clarify the purpose of the vendor.
- Contact Information: Enter the contact details for the vendor.
IT-Pedia® is a comprehensive IT product library that provides an up-to-date source of data about IT products of all types including, for example, hardware, software, and network devices. Alfabet FastLane provides an out-of-the-box integration with IT-Pedia that allows you to import components and the vendors that supply them to the Alfabet FastLane repository.
Only the IT-Pedia model catalog is available in the integration to ITPedia. Items from the procurement catalog cannot be created in Alfabet FastLane.
When an IT product is imported form IT-Pedia, it is imported as a component. The following data will be imported with the component:
- Start and end dates: The Start Date of the component in Alfabet FastLane is based on the Release Date of the imported product. The End Date of the component is based on the End of Extended Support of the imported product.
- Lifecycle: The component lifecycle will be automatically created based on the lifecycle data in IT-Pedia. The following lifecycles phases are available for components imported from IT-Pedia: Plan, Production, End of Sale, End of Support, and End of Extended Support.
- Vendors: The vendor that supplies the component will be specified based on the Manufacturer of the imported product. If the vendor already exists in the repository, the vendor will be automatically associated with the component. If the vendor does not yet exist in the repository, it will be automatically added to the repository along with the new component based on the Manufacturer.
Import components and vendors from IT-Pedia. In the navigation panel, go to Components to open the data workbench for components.
- Click the three vertical dots
button in the right corner of the toolbar and select Import from IT-Pedia. - Click the Update button to fill the selector with initial data.
- You can use the following fields to enter search criteria to find the IT products to add to Alfabet FastLane. You can enter the name or just part of the name.
- Product: Enter the name or part of the name of the products you want to find.
- Version: Add the version number to limit the results found based on the product name.
- Edition: Add the edition to limit the results found based on the product name.
- Manufacturer: Enter the name or part of the name of the manufacturer of the products.
- Model: Enter the product model name to find the products.
Review the IT-Pedia product data for components. Components that have been imported from IT-Pedia will be added to the Components data workbench.
- You can add columns for various IT-Pedia product attributes such as Product Name, Product ID, Manufacturer Name, Manufacture ID, Model Name, and Model ID.
- You can view a composite of all information about the IT-Pedia product that a component is based on. In the data table, click the navigate
button of the component you want to view. Click the More tab and select IT-Pedia Data to view all relevant information about the IT-Pedia product.
Review the IT-Pedia product data for vendors. Vendors that have been imported from IT-Pedia will be added to the Vendors data workbench.
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.
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.