Understanding the Dictionary

As already explained in unit "Introduction of SAP Signavio Process Manager – lesson Understanding the Dictionary," the dictionary is the heart of the entire workspace and can be considered as a central space for all business terms.

By default, common categories are set in each workspace. You as the administrator can remove, extend, or adjust dictionary categories to your organization's needs. You can even add subcategories to help keep the dictionary well-structured.

Dictionary Categories have two purposes:

They are used by the system when creating reports. For example, you can run RACI, document use, or process documentation reports identifying objects of a certain category.

They act as filters when dictionary references are suggested while modeling. For example, dictionary entries for IT systems are only suggested when the user attempts to label an IT system element.

To better understand how to structure the dictionary, we will now take a look at some examples and best practices for parent and subcategories.

Organizational Units can be diverse and complex. To a certain extent, the organizational unit category with its subcategories represents the organizational structure and can contain various stakeholders or responsibilities related to the business processes.

Examples:

Anything that can hold information and that is used or created during processes.

Example:

• Working Instructions
• Governing Document, e.g. Guidelines
• Templates
• Contracts
• Company Agreement

Depending on the IT infrastructure of an organization several types of applications and systems could be assigned to customized subcategories. For example, a division into internal and external systems is possible.

Examples:

• Standard software:
  • Individual applications
  • Custom scripts
• Hardware systems:
  • Individual server instances
  • Data centers
• Hand-held devices
• Integrated systems:
  • Application servers
  • Scanners
  • Printers
  • Personal computers
  

To maintain process risks and controls, you can create your own Dictionary categories to document this process information in a sustainable and manageable way.

Examples:

Risks

• Technical Risks

• Environmental Risks

• Supply-Chain Risks

• Human-based Risks

• Project Risks

• SOX (for companies trading on the us stock exchange)

Controls

• Financial risk controls
• Operational risk controls
• Human-based risk control, e.g. four-eyes-principle

In addition to the standard workspace categories, you as the administrator can also create own subcategories to further break down your main categories. A division into subcategories is useful if these subcategories are evaluated separately or fitted with individual attributes.

Watch the following video to learn how to add a subcategory to your dictionary, and then apply it to your own workspace.

Also the sandbox principle has an important aspect to subcategories as it serves to submit suggestions by the process modeler. First, you must set up new subcategories for each individual sandbox section. For example, underneath Organizational Units, Documents, or IT Systems.

A dedicated team with global access rights should go over the sandboxes periodically to transfer the approved content to the parent folder or category.

The steps for creating sandboxes in the dictionary are shown in the video. Watch the video to see an example of how to setup your sandbox. 

As mentioned, a dedicated team with extended access rights should be responsible for the dictionary content and should go over the sandboxes periodically to transfer the approved content to the parent category.

Below you see two images with the necessary setting to authorize a user group called "Dictionary Responsible". This user group has the features activated to import/export the dictionary (image 1) and full rights set on the complete dictionary (image 2).

Now, that we learned how to create a subcategory, let's look at how to add custom attributes to the dictionary. Custom attributes work the same way as standard attributes and can also be displayed in the Collaboration Hub.

In this video we will take a look how custom attributes are added in the category "Department".

Individual attributes can also be dictionary categories used in other categories. For example, if a group, let’s say the Management Board, is linked to a process, all linked roles included in that group are linked to the process as well. Meaning, the specific fact (for example, contact person) is maintained centrally on the corresponding dictionary entry and provides additional information in each linked process.

In our scenario we want to have the transaction codes be displayed in the category SAP Module.

We see that there are several subcategories created in the category IT Systems. SAP Module and SAP Transaction Codes are the one we need for our set-up.

In the set-up menu we select the subcategory SAP Module, create a new attribute field for the Transaction codes. After the data type "Dictionary link is selected, we see the corresponding subcategory SAP Transaction Codes. With that we created only one source to enter transaction codes, which can be used in other attributes.

Here, a new IT system is created, including one of the available transaction codes already stored in the dictionary.

Here, you can see the dictionary entry of the SAP Module SAP SD. By clicking on this entry, the transaction code is shown, which is also an individual dictionary category.