 | Click here to log in and open your workspace in another tab. Afterward, proceed with the tasks below. |
Add Applications to your workspace
Objective
After completing this lesson, you will be able to add Applications to your SAP LeanIX workspace
HANDS ON
Cheat Sheet: Collect Application List
- CHEAT SHEET: COLLECT APPLICATION LIST
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Depending on your current state there are different strategies to collect your company's application list.
- Already documented in Excel or in your preceding EA system.
- Use data from your CMDB to collect a list of applications.
- If applications are unknown: conduct manual interviews.
- Saas Discovery
- SAP Landscape Discovery
- Inventory Builder
Hint
You can work with departments such as IT operations and security, as well as Finance, Risk & Compliance to identify applications.Hint
It can help to speak directly to the VP/SVP/department heads of domains or products to collect the application list of their department. You can leverage the support of your management sponsor to connect you and help to collect application lists from further stakeholders.
Define applications
- DEFINE APPLICATIONS
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- Description:
Define your organizations Applications.
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Your task:Gather your Applications. As a minimum consider the following Attributes:
- Name
- Descriptions
Hint
Use our in-tool AI Assistant at the top right in the Inventory! - Identify Owners per individual Application
Hint
We highly recommend starting with a selected number of Applications initially. For example, focus on a specific department with low complexity and easy-to-connect stakeholders. This approach allows you to keep the process simple while still gaining valuable insights.
We highly recommend to use the "In Scope" field on Applications fact sheets to reflect your focus on SAP LeanIX. This out-of-the-box field helps you track which Applications are part of your initial area of focus—whether it’s mission-critical apps, those from a specific department, or those impacted by a transformation project (e.g., S/4HANA). Note: These are just examples to illustrate possible use cases; you’re not limited to them and should define your own focus based on your organization’s specific needs.
Using this field allows you to:
- Filter Inventory, Surveys, and Reports to only show In-Scope Applications.
- Visualize them as heat maps using Report views, which can also be embedded into Dashboards for broader visibility.
- Present cleaner, more targeted insights to stakeholders and leadership.
Maintaining this field ensures you're reporting on the right set of Applications and avoiding noise from irrelevant ones during early phases.
How to: Applications- List your selected Applications first with Name and Description
- At the very end, specify the Application Owner/Responsible and make sure to assign a specific name of a responsible person to each Application.
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Metrics:To ensure proper data setup, we recommend orienting yourself on these best-practice metrics:
Best Practice Metric Why it's recommended Applications* are added to the workspace, using at least 60% of the quota.
An important prerequisite for effective enterprise architecture governance is creating transparency in your entire application portfolio. We encourage importing all known applications into the workspace, aiming for at least 60% of your quota to start. To reflect the focus of your current architecture work, use the "In scope" field for a focused subset of your landscape. See the following metric for more details.
At least 20 applications* are in scope
When you're getting onboarded to SAP LeanIX, start with at least 20 critical applications. After assessing the initial set of applications, extend the scope.
At least 20 applications* with a description.
Application descriptions help stakeholders understand their purpose. Names alone may not be universally understood. To streamline the process of creating descriptions, you can use AI capabilities, available in the upper-right corner of the inventory. For more information, see AI Capabilities
At least 20 applications* have a subscriber of type Responsible.
Accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information in your inventory is crucial. Assigning fact sheet responsibility and ownership through subscriptions enables you to ensure information reliability.
* Count all Application Fact Sheets where subtype is "business application" or empty
Caution
Again, remember to check your current state at your workspace onboarding dashboard.
Add applications to your workspace
- ADD APPLICATIONS TO YOUR WORKSPACE
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- Description:
There are five different ways to get data into your workspace:
- Excel Export/Import
- Import Template
- Inline Editing
- SAP Landscape Discovery
- Inventory Builder
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Your task:Conduct the initial import of your organization's Applications and their Relations. As a minimum take care of the following attributes:
- Name
- Description
- (❗) Responsible Application Owner This attribute is a prerequisite for the involvement of your stakeholders and is therefore particularly important. To learn more about adding multiple Responsible Application Owners, please refer back to "Identify fact sheet owners and add them to your workspace".
Hint
Remember: You can assign a responsible application owner without inviting them to the workspace or sending them notifications.The invitation to the workspace can simply take place as soon as you are prepared to familiarize other colleagues with the tool.Find further information on different user statuses .here.The following table provides an overview of additional crucial attributes you need to have in place to successfully complete your onboarding. As these are pieces of information you might need to collect from your stakeholders. However, if you already have this information, feel free to add it right now:
- Lifecycle
- Business Criticality
- Functional Fit
- Technical Fit
- TIME Classification (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate)
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How to:Choose your preferred way of following the recommendations provided below:
Excel Export/Import Import template Inline Editing SAP Landscape Discovery Inventory Builder Why: Why: Why: Why: Why: This method allows you to decide which Attributes you want to import during the initial data import.
This method specifically focuses on the key Attributes.
This method is more time-intensive and typically used in order to make small adjustments rather than for initial data import.
This method provides an automated method for gathering data about your organization's SAP systems and services directly from SAP.
This method uses AI to analyze diagrams and images to automatically extract relevant architectural elements
How: How: How: How: How: Follow this instruction to create your custom import file via Excel export directly from your Inventory.
Click here to access a predefined Excel import template along with step-by-step video guidance on how to utilize it.
Open your workspace and create the Application Fact Sheet and edit the Attributes directly within the tool. Find a detailed description here.
Follow this detailed guide:
Configure SAP Landscape DiscoveryClick here for the how-to-video and find the documentation here. - SAAS DISCOVERYWhy:
Automatically discover your organization's SaaS applications by configuring integrations with third-party systems, such as SSO and CASB solutions.
How:Open your workspace and navigate to the SaaS Discovery within your Inventory (top right). Find a detailed description here.
Best Practice:- Even though the Fact Sheet types "IT Component" and "Provider" are not in scope of onboarding, we still recommend to create them automatically when using SaaS Discovery as the data will be useful when expanding to additional Fact Sheet types in the future.
- Step-by-step approach
- Import the Applications you already have (e.g. from Excel)
- Set up and run SaaS Discovery
- Use the "Matching" tab in the Admin section to match discovered services to existing Application Fact Sheets or create new Fact Sheets
Applications Checklist
I confirm I have completed the steps below:
- You have collected an Application list
- You have added Applications to my workspace
Be sure these steps are completed before moving on to the next lesson.
Completion
