Understanding the Dictionary for Consultants

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
• Others

Users with an Enterprise license can tailor their entries to remove, extend, or adjust dictionary categories to their own needs. They can even add subcategories to help keep their 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

Adding custom categories in the dictionary is not available in the Classic License.

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

You can create dictionary subcategories to help keep your dictionary organized and well-structured. Below is your opportunity to walk through this process and learn how to add a sub-category to your dictionary.

When you are ready, hover over the Setup icon in the upper left screen to start

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.

Click 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 (e.g. contact person) is maintained centrally on the corresponding term and provides additional information in each linked process.

1. Dictionary categories setup

   In this example, we will look at the category IT Systems. We see there are several sub-categories created. In the sub-category SAP Module, a custom attribute is created called SAP Transaction code and linked to the sub-category SAP Transaction Codes. Now, there is only one source to enter transaction codes which can now be used in other attributes.

2. SAP Module entered in the Dictionary

   Here, a new IT System will be created, including one of the available transaction codes already stored in the dictionary.

3. Dictionary view in the Collaboration Hub

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