Interoperability with Horizzon

Interoperability between Alfabet and Horizzon - both part of Bizzdesign's product portfolio - allows you to leverage Horizzon's masterful business process modeling capabilities and Alfabet's powerful application portfolio and strategic portfolio management capabilities. For Alfabet customers, interoperability with Horizzon allows you to use Horizzon's Archimate diagrams and detailed business process modeling capabilities. For Horizzon customers, interoperability with Alfabet provides access to Alfabet's application portfolio management and strategic portfolio management capabilities including dashboarding and business question analyses.

Alfabet - Horizzon integration provides a seamless interaction between the Horizzon and Alfabet repositories.It is recommended that you follow a best-practice methodology and maintain your business processes in Horizzon and your applications in Alfabet. Using the Alfabet-Horizzon integration from the Alfabet side, you can import Horizzon collaborations, business processes, and application support to Alfabet.

Updated data can then be exchanged between Alfabet and Horizzon to ease data maintenance and ensure data consistency. Changes made to business processes in Horizzon can be pushed back to Alfabet at any time via new functionalities in Horizzon that support the integration. Changes made to the data in Alfabet will be automatically pushed to Horizzon via background events, thus keeping both repositories consistent. When working in Horizzon, users can open the Enterprise Studio Online component and work in design mode. Here users can open the collaboration site relevant to your integration and carry out any of the various activities to push and pull data between Horizzon and Alfabet to keep the data up-to-date in both solutions.

You must be a registered Horizzon customer to use Alfabet-Horizzon interoperability.

Set up the integration connection to Horizzon

A Horizzon integration connection must be set up.

Go to Integrations > Horizzon > Integration Connections. Select Horizzon and click the button to open the Integration Connection for Generic API editor.
For cloud customers: The integration connection to Horizzon is preconfigured for Alfabet FastLane and Enterprise Solution in the Integration Connection view.
Authorized Access page: Specify which user groups have permission to trigger the import processes for the Horizzon import.
0Auth2 Configuration page: In the Authorization Code field, enter an authorization code from the API client in Horizzon. Contact Alfabet BD GmbH Support if you need help.
For on- premise customers: You must configure the following server variables in your server alias definition: Horizzon_ClientID Value: Empty , Horizzon_ClientSecret Value: Empty , Horizzon_TokenURL Value: Empty , Horizzon_ApiURL Value: Empty . You must also create an integration connection to Horizzon's API client. Click the plus sign button > Create Generic API Integration Database Connection.
Basic Data page: Specify all fields.
Authorized Access page: Specify which user groups have permission to trigger the import processes for the Horizzon import.
Connection Integration: Specify Horizzon for all three fields.
0Auth2 Configuration page: In the Authorization Code field, enter an authorization code from the API client in Horizzon. Contact Alfabet BD GmbH Support if you need help.

Configure data-triggered actions to update application changes

In order to keep the application support in Horizzon up-to-date with the application data in Alfabet, you must activate preconfigured data-triggered actions.

Go to Configuration > Data-Triggered Actions > Data-Triggered Action Rules.
Search for the data-triggered actions containing POST Application. Each data-triggered action is for a specific application attribute like Name, Version, Status, Description, etc. For example, POST Application Version
Specify the application attributes in Alfabet that, when modified, will automatically initiate an update to application support in Horizzon. Set Is Active to True for every POST Application<attribute> that shall trigger the ADIF job to automatically update application changes. The ADIF job will update all applications with changes to the corresponding application supports in Horizzon. For example, if Is Active is set to True for the data-triggered action POST Application Name and an application's name and description is changed and another application's version is changed, then all changes will be immediately updated to the corresponding application supports in Horizzon due to the change in one application's name.

Import Horizzon collaborations

In Horizzon, a collaboration is a construct that allows invited users to collaboratively model architectural data including business processes and application support stored in a model package or project. As a first step, you must import the Horizzon collaborations that you have access permissions to in Horizzon. Every Horizzon collaboration that has a BPMN diagram in will be imported to Alfabet.

A link is created to each collaboration imported to Alfabet. Later you can select one of the Horizzon collaborations to import its business processes to the business process model in your Alfabet repository.

Go to Integrations > Horizzon.

In the header of the content area, click 1. Import Collaborations to import all Horizzon collaborations for which you have access permissions to the Alfabet repository. The Horizzon collaborations are displayed in the Horizzon Collaborations view.

To check the status of the import, go to Home > Administration page > Events Overview. Check the Event State column for the import event to ensure that it has successfully executed and is in the state Finished.

As a next step, import the Horizzon business processes stored in any of the collaborations displayed in the view.

Import Horizzon business processes

If a business process model already exists in the Alfabet repository, it will be displayed in Integrations > Horizzon > Business Process Models view. If a business process model doesn't exist, click the plus sign button > Business Process Model to create one.

To import business processes to your business process model:

First you must specify the Horizzon collaboration from which you want to import the business processes. In the Business Process Models view, click in the cell in the column Horizzon Collaboration ID and select the Horizzon collaboration that has the business processes you want to import.

In the header of the content area, click 2. Import Business Processes. Alternatively, you can click the ThreeDots_Black

3-dots button > Import Business Processes from Horizzon. All business processes in the collaboration will be imported to the business process model in the Alfabet repository. The import process for business processes from Horizzon considers the first business process model that is associated with a Horizzon collaboration and will populate that business process hierarchy coming. Only the first BPMN model linked to a Horizzon collaboration is taken into consideration for the import.

To review the imported business process hierarchy, click Business Architecture > Business Processes in the left navigation panel. The Business Processes explorer displays the entire imported hierarchy.

To view an individual business process that has been imported, click the

navigate button in the Business Process Models view to open the content area of the business process model. Go to the Horizzon page.

All imported business processes are in the Business Processes view. Click the

navigate button to open the content area of the business process. A Horizzon Link attribute is displayed in the Basic Data section in the Overview page. Click the link to navigate to the business process in Horizzon where you can view its business process model diagram. The BPMN diagram provides full functionality so that you can maintain and update the data on the spot.

As a next step, import the Horizzon application support specified for the imported business processes.

Import Horizzon application support

In Alfabet, applications provide support to business processes. In Horizzon, the relationship between business processes and applications is documented by the served by attribute on the business process. After you have imported the business processes from Horizzon to your business process model in Alfabet, you can import the application support specified for the Horizzon business processes. The imported application support is displayed in the Providing Applications view of each business process.

In the header of the content area, click 3. Import Application Support. Alternatively, you can navigate to the content area of a business process and click the 3-dots button > Import Application Support from Horizzon. All relationships specified on Horizzon business processes via the served by attribute will be imported as business support to the Alfabet repository.
To check the status of the import, go to Home > Administration page > Events Overview. Check the Event State column for the import event to ensure that it has successfully executed and is in the state Finished
To view the business support, click the navigate button to open the content area of the business process model and go to the Horizzon page. In the Business Processes page, click the navigate button to open the content area of the business process. The Supporting Applications view shows the applications supporting the business process. You can add the Horizzon Link column to the view via the Structure button.

Navigate to a business process in Horizzon

A Horizzon Link attribute is displayed in the content area of each business process imported to Alfabet from Horizzon. When a user clicks the link, the Horizzon user interface opens and the business process in Horizzon is displayed. Here you can see the business process model of the business process in its business process model diagram. The BPMN diagram provides full functionality so that you can maintain and update the data on the spot. Every business process in Horizzon that was imported to Alfabet will have a Link to Alfabet attribute that will take you back to the business process' content area in Alfabet.

Please note that when you navigate from the business process in Alfabet to its BPMN diagram in Horizzon, you will land on in the publication mode which is a read-only view. To edit business processes and application support in the BPMN diagram, click the Enterprise Studio Online button in the upper right corner to open the design mode. In Enterprise Studio Online you can open the collaboration site relevant to your integration and carry out any of the following activities in the Alfabet tab is displayed in the header.

Push process changes: Allows the Horizzon user to push the changes to business processes made in BPMN diagrams to the relevant business process model or business process in Alfabet.
Pull application changes: Allows the Horizzon user to fetch all applications from Alfabet and add it to the application collection in Horizzon. Applications in Horizzon will be updated with relevant application data captured in Alfabet including start and end dates, lifecycle information, etc. This allows application analysts or EA analysts to use up-to-date applications in their models. Please note that any changes an Alfabet user makes to an application linked to Horizzon will be automatically pushed to Horizzon.
Link applications in Alfabet: Allows the URLs on applications maintained in Horizzon to be pushed to the applications in the Alfabet repository.
Roll up application support: Any changes to application support for a business process made by an Alfabet user in the Horizzon BPMN diagram can be explicitly updated to the Alfabet repository. Alternatively, the changes will be automatically updated to Alfabet by the nightly batch job.