Capture support service data

Support services are technological activities, processes, or solutions offered by a service provider to support a business service. A support service is constituted by service items that deliver the support service via components, standard platforms, virtual servers, or physical servers. Examples of support services are hosting of IT capabilities, first-level support, or network administration.

Support services should be well defined, advertised in a service catalog, priced or costed, and measured for consumption. Each support service may have one SLA (service level agreement) assigned to it.

Users with the user profiles Portfolio Manager and Portfolio Admin can add and edit support services in Alfabet.

The license package Enterprise Architecture Management is required to work with support services. The use case Service Portfolio Management must be activated.

Go to Service Architecture > Support Services:

Create a new support service from scratch. Click New > Support Service. Specify the support service's attributes as well as the relationships that the support service has to other assets in the repository.

A guided data entry view is available to help you provide relevant data and ensure data quality for the support services in your repository. When you create a new support service in the editor, click the Close and Continue as Guided Editing button to open the data entry view. Or go to the support service's content area toolbar and click Analysis View > Data Entry View.

You will see a content area page with an additional panel listing content items like Basic Data, Lifecycle Data, Evaluation. Click the content item caption to navigate to the content item in the data entry view.

Symbols indicate where data quality issues exist. Click the data quality issue symbol to navigate your focus directly to the spot where you can fix the issue.

Edit the attributes and relationships for a support service. Click a support service to open the object inspection pane or double-click to go to its content area. Specify the support service's attributes as well as the relationships that the support service has to other assets in the repository.

Try to capture as much information as possible about the support service because complete data considerably improves the results of business questions and other analytics.

Once a support service is in the repository, you can define more details about the it in the  Support Services data workbench.

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 via the Structure column. Click to learn about how to use data workbenches.

Or click a support service to open the object inspection pane, or double-click to go to its content area > Overview page.

Define the support service's basic data.

  • Name: (Mandatory) Enter a meaningful name for the support service that is known by the users in your enterprise.
  • Version: Enter a version number for the support service.
  • Status: This is an approval status and typically indicates the level of quality of the information about the support service. The release status determines whether a support service can or cannot be deleted. Possible values are:
    • Draft: The support service has only mandatory data defined.
    • Under Review: The support service is documented and being reviewed. A support service with this release status cannot be deleted.
    • Approved: The support service has been approved by the responsible stakeholders. A support service cannot be deleted when it has an approved release status. A business service with this release status cannot be deleted.
    • Data imported: The data regarding this support service has been imported from an external system. Additional changes may be required to improve the data quality. A business service with this release status can be deleted.
    • Trash: The support service is no longer valid and can be deleted.
  • Provider: The organization that provides the support service. Every business service should have a provider defined.
  • Authorized User: The user who creates the support service is the authorized user per default. This can be changed.
  • Authorized User Groups: Select one or more authorized user groups that shall have write permissions to the support service. All users in the authorized user group can edit the business service.

Define the lifecycle attributes. Go to the LIfecycle Data attribute box and define the following:

  • Start Date and End Date: The start and end date captures the support service's planned start and end dates. These dates should be defined so that they begin before and end after the start/end dates of the applications, deployments, and support services that deliver the business services. Click the calendar icon to select the date or enter the date in the date format Month/Day/Year. For example: 4/30/2026
  • Object State: The object state describes the use of the support service in the real world. This can be understood as the operational status of the support service. Possible values are:
    • Plan: The support service is proposed to be used and still in the stages of planning and building.
    • Active: The support service is currently being used. The active period begins with the support service's start date and stops with the end date.
    • Retired: The support service is no longer used.
  • Strategic Service: Select the checkbox if the support service is strategic for the company.
  • Successor: The next support service that will follow this support service version.

Service groups must already be in the repository in order to assign the support service to a service group. Click to find out how to capture service group data.

Service groups logically structure and bundle the support services and business services relevant for a service portfolio. You can assign the support service to multiple service groups in order to analyze your business services and their support services from various perspectives.

Click the navigate Navigate button of the support service to open the content area. Go to Overview > Asset Grouping. In the Service Groups field, enter the name of the service group you want to assign the support service to. Or click in the field to open the selector and select each service group that you want to assign the support services to. Click outside of the selector to close it and update the Asset Grouping field.

A role represents a functional responsibility that a user or organization has for the support service. 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?.

Responsibilities are based on preconfigured role types. Your company may also configure custom role types via the Portfolio Admin user profile. Depending on the role type, a specified user and/or a specified organization may fulfill the responsibility for the demand. A user assigned responsibility via a role has read-only permissions to the demand. To change data about the demand, they must also be specified as an authorized user or member of a n authorized user group.

Multiple roles can be assigned to a support service in the Support Services data workbench or the support service content area via Overview > Responsibilities. A person or organization might have any of the following roles for the support service as well as custom roles added by your company:

  • Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the support service.
  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the support service and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the support service and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Service Owner: A person that is the subject matter expert for the support service from a functional or technical point of view.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the support service and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

To specify responsibilities for the support service:

  1. Click in the relevant role field to open the selector.
  2. Expand the ORGANIZATION or USER sections in the selector and select the person or organization fulfilling the role.
  3. Click OK to save the role definition and close the selector.

An SLA (service level agreement) defines an agreement between the service providers and consumers about the standards that the support service is obligated to meet. Every support service should have a service level agreement.

  1. Go to the content area of the support service. Click the button SLA > Create Service Level Agreement.
  2. In the editor, specify a name for the service level agreement. Specify also the amount of time the support service should be available in the Service Uptime field as well as when it is available in the Service Validity field. Click OK to save the data and close the editor.
  3. In the Overview page, click the name of the SLA in the Service Level Agreement field to open its content area.
  4. In the Evaluation view, specify values for the following indicators:
    • Availability: The amount of time that the service is available for use by consumers during the defined uptime hours.
    • Backup Frequency: The frequency guaranteed by the service provider to back up the service data.
    • Responsiveness: The average time that it takes for an issue to be answered by the service desk of the service provider.
    • Security Breach Alert: The number of hours that the service provider has to alert its customers who consume the service of a security breach of the organization's data.

The business question Where do we have SLA violations? examines the service level agreements for business services and their support services and compares the indicators of the SLAs. The visualization highlights where support services do not provide enough support to the business service and where violations are occurring with service level agreements.

Go to the support service's content area > Data Quality > Data Quality Details view to check the data quality of the support service you are defining.

  1. Expand the table in order to review and correct all data quality issues showing Hint or Warning in the Severity column.
  2. Double-click the link in the Resolution column to navigate to the location where you can correct the data quality issue.
  3. When you navigate back to the content area > Data Quality > Data Quality Details view, the resolved issue will no longer be displayed and the Data Quality Completeness report will show the improvement in data quality.
  4. Correct all data quality issues to achieve a perfect data quality completeness score.