Understanding the Dictionary

The dictionary is the heart of the entire workspace and can be considered as a central space for all business terms. The dictionary allows you to save and reuse these terms in all your process models to ensure a uniform and consistent naming.

The following categories are set by default in each workspace. Some of the most common dictionary entries are:

• Organization
• Documents
• IT Systems
• Events
• Goal
• Requirements
• Processes
• Others

You can tailor entries to remove, extend, or adjust dictionary categories to your organization own 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.

Note

Select each dictionary category below to see some Best-Practices..

You can create dictionary subcategories to help keep your dictionary organized and well-structured. Watch the video below to learn how to add a sub-category to your dictionary, and then apply it on your own workspace.

Now, that we learned how to create a sub-category, let's take a look at how to add custom attributes to the dictionary. You can add custom attributes for diagram elements and dictionary categories. Custom attributes work the same way as standard attributes and can also be displayed in the Collaboration Hub.

Note

Choose the play button to watch the video below on how to add a custom attribute for a dictionary category. This is a two-part video. 

Part 1: How are custom attributes added in the category "Department"?

Part 2: How are custom attributes viewed in the dictionary?

The individual attributes can also be dictionary categories used in other categories.

Advantages:

• Information can be nested with attributes. Example: If a group (e.g the Board of Management) is linked to a process, all linked roles included in that group are linked to the process as well.
• The specific fact (for example, contact person) is maintained centrally on the corresponding term and provides additional information in each linked process.

Select the numbers, starting with number 1, to review the Key Takeaways from this lesson.