Question

Modeling Organization for Applications used by everyone?

  • 11 April 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 140 views

Does anyone have any advice on how best to model an Organization-Application linkage for Apps that are used by everyone in the organization? I’m thinking I’d want to create a Level 1 Organization (subtype=BU) to represent all employees of the organization generically. If there’s a specific team or region of users where that application has a distinct functional fit that needs to be called out, then we would add those as additional organizations. I think that should give us flexibility to provide insight into different usage perspectives for those shared services, but curious to know what approaches others have taken.


4 replies

Userlevel 6
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Hi @eric.jerskey 

Having a „global“ organization can be a disadvantage if you want to list all applications used by a specific org, because you always need to add all global apps to it (if it‘s in a separate hierarchy) or because it messes up your display names by adding the virtual „global“ node at the very top.

I prefer the approach to mark global apps using a tag called „global“, and then setting up an automation that keeps all global apps linked to all relevant organizations.

I‘m explaining a very basic implementation of this exact use case in our latest LeanIX automation talk, somewhere in the middle of the webinar in the part about LeanIX Automation Platform:

https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/18723/598618

 

Userlevel 5
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HI @eric.jerskey 

We have a “Global” organisation (subtype = Team) that are the “owner” in a relationship to the application. As we are continually adding other organisations to the globally managed applications we also keep track of those by other (subtype usually = “BU” but some others) as a “user” with “active from” dates and other attributes if needed.

The advantage of keeping individual BU organisations in the relation means you can easily filter lists/diagrams/reports and even use portals, whilst retaining flexibility for and details about planned consolidation, acquisitions or divestments.

It really depends on how dynamic your organisations are and whether that view is worth the efforts for you to maintain.

Thank you both for the feedback. Sounds like the “Best answer” is dependent on the use case, so I might need to experiment with both. 🙏

I have that relationship in SNOW between “business areato “product group->product line->product → application” maintained/mapped in SNOW.

Like this post….. I wanted to put “business area” in the Organisation Factsheet Type and get an app → org view…. , but couldn’t get the report view i wanted between “business area/Org” to “apps”….. so i just packed “business area” into the Factsheet type “business context”…. this works for reporting, but i’m going to get into trouble when we start building out or Organsation model further i think.

 

What i’m considering, is (1) writing code to create a mapping directly between “business areato application” (2) maintain the relationship in ServiceNow (i can then depend on that data being correct), put “business area” into the “organisation fact sheet type”, then get the Org-to-App report i want….. but my issue is i don’t want to write/maintain/data check that code & mappings.

we are supposed to be a “product led company”, (we used to be a “service led company”), but everyone still looks at apps as apps, and we license apps, and support apps, and bill time on apps.

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