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We build the chain that gives a system its significance: from the department through process and business service to the server. At the end the server shows which department and which business workflow depend on it. Prerequisite: an inventoried estate and write access in the Inventory area.

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Starting point

Docusnap Sports GmbH runs its merchandise management on an SAP system. The scan has captured operating system, services and hardware. What consequences an outage has for the business is not in the scan. We map that now.

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1. Create the organization

Six types describe the organization. We create four of them now, Application and Information in the next step. No scan creates them: All four carry only a name. We create them through Asset in the lists under Organization: the department Sales and the people in that department.
The dialog’s type selection is restricted to the types of the opened list. If the type is missing, the list is the wrong one.
We create several people or departments at once: set the switch to Multiple, paste the name column from a table. See Importing Assets from a Spreadsheet.

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2. Create application and information

The scan captures installations, not applications. That a database, an application server and a web front end together make up the merchandise management is something we establish with two further types: We create the application Merchandise Management and the information Customer Data.

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3. Create process and business service

1

Business service

The service the company delivers: Order Processing.
2

Process

The business workflow beneath it: Order Entry. Keeping process and business service apart makes sense when several processes carry the same service.

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4. Define relations

The types get their meaning through relations. We open Order Entry and the Relations tab.
1

Link

Link above the Defined Relations zone opens the Add Relations dialog.
2

Target, then type

We choose the business service Order Processing as the Targets, then the Relation Type. If the field reads Determined automatically, a rule from Data Model applies; we choose nothing.
3

Mark the critical connection

We connect Order Entry to the application Merchandise Management, and that to the SAP system. On the connection to the SAP system we set Critical and write into the description why.
4

Connect the department

We connect the department Sales to the process.
5

Connect the information

We connect the information Customer Data to the SAP system. A rule determines the relation type Processed on automatically; we choose nothing.
A relation type carries its own label per direction. From the process the relation reads Uses, from the application Used by. The selection list shows both readings, Uses (Used by). The arrow in the dialog shows the direction.

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Result

On the SAP system, the Relations tab lists the application Merchandise Management marked Critical, and the information Customer Data. The Relation Map shows the whole chain: the application Merchandise Management, the process Order Entry, the business service Order Processing and the department Sales attached to the process.

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Next steps

Through this chain you derive the protection need of the server: Setting the Protection Need. In ITAM you rate the Criticality of the server; the chain justifies the level: Capturing ITAM Data. ISMS and ITAM are included from Business on.