In the dynamic world of enterprise architecture, creating and managing effective viewpoints is crucial for visualizing and understanding complex data. Ardoq offers powerful solutions to streamline this process. This article guides you through the creation of five commonly used viewpoints in Ardoq, providing practical steps and insights to help you maximize Ardoq's potential. Whether you are an application owner, a CIO, or a business stakeholder, these viewpoints will enable you to access, analyze, and present data more efficiently, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency in your organization.
Why Create Viewpoints and Who Will Use Them
The first viewpoints you create are the ones users in your organization will see on Ardoq's Home page when they log in.
Ardoq users can use viewpoints to:
Access data: For example, an application owner might want to know when their application is about to retire. Instead of generating the view manually, they can use the Application Lifecycle Ownership Viewpoint you created for them to access these insights.
Create a view: Users who do modeling in Ardoq may want to generate views for other stakeholders. For instance, the COO might want to see what departments are responsible for a specific objective to organize a working group. Enterprise architects can create a view based on the viewpoint for the COO with the objective of interest selected as the context component.
How to Decide Which Viewpoints to Create
However, that’s not always the case. Here are three ideas to help you understand:
Create a few viewpoints as described in this article: We have selected examples from the Solutions that are most popular among Ardoq users, assuming they will likely be helpful for your audience as well.
View the “Most viewed assets” chart in the Usage Metrics dashboard: This can give you insight into what kind of information your Ardoq users are looking for.
Survey users directly: Ask the users in your organization who model in Ardoq what kind of viewpoints they would like to have ready to use, so they can start creating views and edit them to create new viewpoints.
In this article, we will cover the first point from this list.
You want to make Ardoq ready for your team by giving them access to the most commonly used access patterns. Although Ardoq doesn’t know which viewpoints or views are most commonly used in your specific organization, we can walk you through the viewpoints that are included in the most popular Ardoq Solutions:
We have previously covered how to create a viewpoint in Ardoq. Using the same approach, we’ll look at how to create a viewpoint from a specific Solution.
How to Create Five Viewpoints of the Most Commonly Used Ardoq Solutions
Application Lifecycle Management Viewpoint
Let’s look at the dataset behind the Application Lifecycle Ownership viewpoint.
The purpose of this viewpoint is to show when specific applications are retired and who the owners of these applications are.
Audience - consumers of the view: Application owners or other roles in your company who are responsible for keeping the application portfolio up to date and managing associated budgets.
Select a component type.
We will select “Person” as the context component for this viewpoint. This means that any view that will be created using this viewpoint in the future will be generated based on the component you select that has a type “Person.”
2. Select references.
Make sure to unselect “Show only references with linked components” if you’d like to review all components and references available in your metamodel.
At this step, you can extend your viewpoint by selecting different components and references leading to this component. For example, if you’d like to see which external organization supplies an application, you should click on the Application and select additional references.
3. (Optional) Apply filters, grouping, or formatting.
4. Add viewpoint details, apply view style, and add a viewpoint description.
Here are some tips for picking a good name for your viewpoint.
5. Save as a viewpoint or a view.
Business Capability Realization Viewpoint
Let’s look at the dataset behind the Business Capability Realization viewpoint.
The purpose of this viewpoint is to show how existing business capabilities, as well as the people who are experts in those capabilities, who they report to, and by what applications these capabilities are realized, giving insights into how business processes are connected and realized by different solutions.
Audience - consumers of the view: CIO/CTO and business stakeholders who need to understand how the business is connected to people, process owners, and IT solutions to make the organization's capability happen.
Select a component type.
You should start traversing from the “Business Capability” component type.
2. Select references.
Select references. Outgoing reference: “Business Capability” -> “Is Parent If” -> “Business Capability” / “Application” / “Application Mode”; “Person” is an expert in “Business Capability”. This will add an additional three component types to your viewpoint.
Make sure to unselect “Show only references with linked components” if you’d like to review all components and references available in your metamodel.
3. (Optional) Apply filters, grouping, or formatting.
4. Add viewpoint details, apply view style, and add a viewpoint description.
5. Save as a viewpoint or a view.
Application Integration Owners and Experts Viewpoint
Let’s look at the dataset behind the Application Integration Owners and Experts viewpoint.
The purpose of this viewpoint is to capture the data that is realized by existing interfaces, the list of applications connected to the interfaces, and who owns these applications or are expert in them.
Audience - consumers of the view: IT Management who want to have a full overview of applications and their integrations across the organization, including dependencies in terms of data lineage and business impact, technologies enabling those integrations, and the people involved in managing and maintaining those technologies and integrations.
Select a component type.
Let’s start traversing from “Application.”
2. Select references.
We would want to see what interfaces the applications are part of, as well as experts in these applications and their owners, and what data entry interface supplies.
Select all required references to extend the viewpoint model.
Make sure to unselect “Show only references with linked components” if you’d like to review all components and references available in your metamodel.
3. (Optional) Apply filters, grouping, or formatting.
4. Add viewpoint details, apply view style, and add a viewpoint description.
5. Save as a viewpoint or a view.
Company and Department Objectives Viewpoint
Let’s look at the dataset behind the Company and Department Objectives viewpoint.
The purpose of this viewpoint is to provide insights into the company and department objectives and key results.
Audience - consumers of this viewpoint: These insights could be a great addition to S2E presentations for Department Heads, employees who execute these OKRs, and business leaders.
Select a component type.
Let’s start traversing from “Objectives.”
2. Select references.
We would like to add owners of the objectives and key results to this viewpoint. At this step, select references that will bring these component types into the viewpoint.
Make sure to unselect “Show only references with linked components” if you’d like to review all components and references available in your metamodel.
3. (Optional) Apply filters, grouping, or formatting.
4. Add viewpoint details, apply view style, and add a viewpoint description.
5. Save as a viewpoint.
Application & Infrastructure Cost Roll-ups Viewpoint
Let’s look at the dataset behind the Application & Infrastructure Cost Roll-ups viewpoint.
Select a component type.
We’ll start traversing from the “Business capability” component type.
2. Select references.
Let’s add all remaining references and components to make sure the final view will meet the purpose.
Make sure to unselect “Show only references with linked components” if you’d like to review all components and references available in your metamodel.
3. (Optional) Apply filters, grouping, or formatting.
4. Add viewpoint details, apply view style, and add a viewpoint description.
5. Save as a viewpoint or a view.
Why Can’t Some Users Access Pre-Built Viewpoints
Ardoq offers 30+ pre-built viewpoints; however, due to technical limitations, they are only accessible to Ardoq users who download Ardoq assets for the first time. Understanding the metamodel of the specific Ardoq Solution and the needs of your audience could guide you in creating a viewpoint. If you have previously downloaded Ardoq Solutions (former “Use Case Bundles”) but don’t have access to the latest viewpoints, on the Solutions page you can still see all the components, references, and fields the Solution includes. Based on this, you can create a viewpoint for your users.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us via an in-app chat or contact your Customer Success Manager.