Introduction to Applications

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to explain what Applications in SAP LeanIX are

Applications

Applications are the center of the SAP LeanIX Meta Model and therefore crucial for getting started with SAP LeanIX. In addition, Applications lay the foundation for applying your first use cases to get the initial value out of your workspace quickly.

An Application:

Processes or analyzes business data and has business users. Good indication of that would be a presence of a user interface.
Should also provide specific Business Capabilities to the organization.
Needs to have a business purpose as it needs to support the underlying business tasks or processes.
Relies on IT Components to function. (It has technical components such as software or hardware that make it work).

Application deep dive: Why applications are essential

Discover why Applications are highly important, how to model them and what best ways are to configure them:

WHY APPLICATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL

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Applications are the center of the SAP LeanIX Meta Model and therefore crucial for getting started with SAP LeanIX. Since they need to store more Attributes right from the beginning, we recommend to import them after Business Capabilities and Organizations, once you know the process already.

Setting up Application Fact Sheets with relation to Business Capability and Organization Fact Sheets is considered foundational to any of your future use cases. This unlocks your first quick-win for IT landscape visibility.

Application deep dive: Modeling Guidelines

MODELING GUIDELINES
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾: To assist you in defining your Applications, we offer the SAP LeanIX documentation Modeling Guidelines per Fact Sheet Type.
Followthis link(opens in a new tab) to access the complete context of the Applications Modeling Guidelines.

Application deep dive: Application Owner

APPLICATION OWNER

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For Applications it is absolutely crucial to define at least one Responsible owner as mandatory within the section "Subscriptions".

Hint

Use the contact status to avoid sending unwanted notifications to users in the onboarding phase.

	Contact: Assigned as responsible application	Full User: Invited to the workspace
Status User object is visible in workspace under Administration→ Users:	all, not invited	all, invited, active*
Can be added/created via	xsl, import ( subscriber) inline table edit (subscriber) API endpoint	Email invitation API endpoint SCIM login (e.g. SSO)
Can be add as subscriber	✅	✅
Permission role assigned	⛔	✅
Access to workspace	⛔	✅
Receives notifications and surveys from SAP LeanIX	⛔	✅

To learn more about adding non-SAP LeanIX users as subscribers, click here.

* Screenshot belongs to Status

Application deep dive: SAAS Discovery

SAAS DISCOVERY

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SaaS Discovery is designed to seamlessly integrate with a variety of sources, including Single Sign-On (SSO), to automatically compile a comprehensive list of your organization's Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.

On top of that, any new services identified through this integration can be effortlessly synchronized with your LeanIX workspace.

SaaS Discovery allows you to automatically discover your organization's SaaS Applications. You can automate the process of adding new SaaS Applications to SAP LeanIX and ensure that your SaaS inventory remains up to date.

Later in this course, you will get detailed guidance on how to actually do it.

Hint

As an SAP company, we are constantly working on further expanding the SaaS Discovery offerings. Keeping an eye on our documentation really pays off.

Application deep dive: Configuration

CONFIGURATION: COMPLETION SCORE, QUALITY SEALS

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As mentioned in the "why", for Applications we need to take more Attributes and also configuration options into account:

Completion Score	Quality Seals
Navigate to the configuration area of Applications. Edit the configuration of the weight scale (same as for Business Capabilities and Organizations) Best practice (differs from Business Capabilities and Organizations) We recommend to set the following Attributes to weighting1: Name Description Lifecycle Functional Fit Technical Fit Business Criticality TIME Classification	Within the configuration navigate to the Quality Seals section on top. Open Quality States and Set a renewal interval that suits your needs. We recommend 6 months. Open Mandatory Fields Best practice We recommend to define the following Attributes as mandatory: Name Description Lifecycle Functional Fit Technical Fit Business Criticality TIME Classification

Completion Score

Quality Seals

Navigate to the configuration area of Applications.
Edit the configuration of the weight scale (same as for Business Capabilities and Organizations)

Best practice

(differs from Business Capabilities and Organizations)

We recommend to set the following Attributes to weighting1:

Name
Description
Lifecycle
Functional Fit
Technical Fit
Business Criticality
TIME Classification

Within the configuration navigate to the Quality Seals section on top.
Open Quality States and Set a renewal interval that suits your needs. We recommend 6 months.
Open Mandatory Fields

Best practice

We recommend to define the following Attributes as mandatory:

Name
Description
Lifecycle
Functional Fit
Technical Fit
Business Criticality
TIME Classification

Additional Information

Hint

For the quality seals mechanism, it is important that you have a well set up application ownership model implemented to SAP LeanIX.

Excursus: Application versus IT Component

Even though we won't focus on IT Components during onboarding, it is worth mentioning here and pointing out the difference between Application and IT Component. This will help you later to define your organization's Applications for the initial import.

As learned, Applications are software systems or programs that process or analyze business data to support business tasks, processes, or aspects of an organization's business model. In SAP LeanIX, we also capture the information that supports the Applications. We call this information IT Component.

So, what are actually IT Components within SAP LeanIX? Look at the table bellow to learn the details:

Represent the Technology	IT Components represent the technology (software and hardware) or services an organization's applications depend on, and they can provide information on both development and operations.
Vital bridge between Applications and Providers	IT Components encompass the technology, both software and hardware, as well as services on which Applications rely. They are the vital bridge between Applications and Providers. IT Components are powerful for getting crucial insights for obsolescence risk management, operating costs, and managing other risks such as provider/location/outage management.
Provide hosting and provider information	In general, you need IT Components to provide hosting information and to get Provider information into SAP LeanIX. You can leverage the SaaS Discovery and SaaS Catalog as a shortcut to get this information into SAP LeanIX (out of onboarding scope).

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