Why?
People are at the center of any organization, and are often the center of the model. Who should I talk to about this Application? Who is impacted by these changes?
This data is rich context for personalization. As you map out your architecture, Ardoq will get better and better at using this information to drive personalized experiences -- especially with AI.
How?
User accounts and people data are often involved in two synchronization processes:
Integrations with 3rd party systems containing Person data (e.g. Microsoft Graph)
Integrations with SSO and/or SCIM for user account provisioning
Rather than adding even more complexity to this process, we take the simple option: explicitly binding a user account to a person component. This option can be found in the Users table, as the "Linked Component" column:
This linking is stable, so it will remain unchanged if emails change.
To begin with, you can link each account individually:
However, this can be cumbersome. After linking a person component, Ardoq will check to see if there are any smart matches between your user-base and your person components. Currently, this will check for Person components containing matching contact_email fields. However, if you have multiple workspaces containing the Person component type, we will be unable to provide automated suggestions. For such cases, a separate bulk linking flow will be released soon.
What?
So what does this change? How is it used by the platform?
Currently Ardoq uses this in 2 different ways, but we will be continuing to release many features that leverage linked user accounts.
My Applications
Business users are key personas where personalization brings value, and we've started with application owners. Linking a user account tells the platform: "This user is an application owner, and these are the applications they own". You can then leverage this on the Discover Homepage, with the My Applications widget:
The My Applications widget gives your application owners fast access to their data. It will only show if they are an application owner. Currently this is based on our Foundation metamodel of Person -> Owns -> Application. However please see our FAQ questions related to customization.
Important: This widget will not show by default. You will need to enable it in the Discover settings.
Personalized Images
Person components often have images attached to them to aid in visual presentation. In such cases, we use them to enrich the UI with profile photos. There are many places where this will appear, and it bring a bit of richness to the UI:
FAQ
What determines "My" Applications?
We currently support the metamodel from our Solutions, of Person -> Owns -> Application:
However, we realize that there are many possible extensions to this:
Experts
Initiatives & processes
Capability ownership
etc
In addition, you may want slightly more complex definitions which may span multiple hops.
These are all actively being considered, so stay tuned!
One of my users can't see the My Applications widget. Why not?
It's likely one of two reasons:
You're using a different metamodel than Person -> Owns -> Application.
The user isn't an Application owner.
The user doesn't have read access to the Person workspace or the Applications workspace. This widget will not bypass read permissions, and is purely a personalization layer. In order for them to see the widget, they need read access on the Application and Person workspace(s).
Can we rearrange the ordering of the My Applications widget?
Not currently. If the user is an application owner, and they have applications, My Applications will always be shown above Browse Data.
We are considering ways to support rearranging and customizing the Discover homepage, so we don't see the current behaviour as a longterm solution.
How can I make sure that the linking is created automatically?
Currently, you need to periodically establish the linking for your users by navigating to the Users page. While this only takes a few clicks, but we understand it's just another maintenance task. We plan to allow admins to configure stable linking rules so that the linking happens automatically without admin intervention.