Business units

The business units feature is currently in Beta status. This means that some aspects of the feature may not be as complete or elegant as you might expect from a feature that is in General Availability (GA) status. 

The business units feature is disabled by default. If you would like to use it, please contact your ValueBlue account manager. ValueBlue Product Management will then evaluate if the feature is a good fit with your organization's intended use. 

 

In this article 

• What is a business unit?
• Navigate content using business units
• Organize content using business units
• How to create 'crossover content'
• Copy business units
• OData

 

What is a business unit?

Business units is a powerful feature to organize content (objects and views), thereby simplifying navigation by end users. Without business units, users see all objects and views, which can make it difficult to find the view or object you're looking for. 

As the name suggests, business units are meant to represent more or less standalone parts of your organization, such as sales, marketing, OpCo France, OpCo Brazil, and similar. You can also create business units for other subsets of your content, for example, a reference architecture, baseline and other.

 

Navigate content using business units

When there are multiple business units, you can switch between them by selecting a business unit from the dropdown on the left of the top menu. You open the dropdown by clicking the vignette to the right of the selected business unit.

 

The top menu always shows the selected business unit. 

 

The selected business unit then acts as a filter for navigating content in the UI:

• In the object browser, you only see objects from the selected business unit.
• In the Open view dialog of the view editor, you only see views from the selected business unit.
• In the process portal, you only see official processes from the selected business unit.
  
  
• When you create a new object or view, it will be created in the selected business unit.
• When you add an object to a view, you can only choose objects from the selected business unit.
• When you add a relationship to an object from the relationship table, you can only choose objects from the selected business unit.

Please note that other aspects of the UI ignore the selected business unit, so:

• A view can contain objects from any business unit. The side panel shows the business unit of the object you selected.
• An object can have relationships to objects in any business unit. The relationship table shows the business unit of each related object.
  
  

Organize content using business units

Master business unit

After the business units feature is enabled, there is one business unit referred to as the 'master'. The actual name of the master business unit is your 'friendly tenant name'. To change this name displayed in the top menu, follow the steps described here. 

The top menu options for Source processing and Admin are only accessible when the master business unit is selected. 

Note: It is possible to copy the master business unit in your tenant, but not to delete it.

 

As an administrator, you can create additional business units by going to the Admin area and then selecting Business Units beta under Configuration. 

 

Tips:

1) You can't rename a business unit. You can only delete a business unit when it's empty. 

The master business unit initially contains all objects and views. You can then start organizing the content by moving objects and views from one business unit to another with the steps explained below. 

2) If you prefer that users always work in the correct business unit, consider setting a view in that business unit as a role based homepage. If a user has a role with a homepage, after they log in to BlueDolphin, they will land on that view which also ensures that they will begin their BlueDolphin session in the desired business unit.

For more information on the homepage functionality, please refer to Which homepage does a user see?

 

Bulk move objects 

1. Select the business unit you want to move objects from.
2. Select one or more objects in the object browser.
   You select an object by clicking the checkbox on the left of its title. 
3. Click the Move selected objects icon in the toolbar above the object browser .
4. BlueDolphin shows you a pop-up with a dropdown list of business units.
   Choose the business unit you want to move the selected objects to. 
5. BlueDolphin moves the objects to the target business unit.
   After the move, you see a notification with the number of objects that were moved and the number of objects that failed to move, if any.
   An object fails to be moved when there is another object in the target business unit with the same type and title. 

 

Move a view

Unlike objects, you can only move one view at a time.

1. Open a view in the edit mode.
2. From the three-dot menu, select Move.

      3. BlueDolphin shows you a pop-up with a dropdown list of business units.
          Select the business unit you want to move the view to. 

       4. BlueDolphin moves the view to the target business unit. 

       5. After the move, the view is still open in the edit mode.

          The selected business unit is the business unit that you moved the view to. 

Note: You can only move a view in edit mode. This implies it is not possible to move a published or official view. Perform the following steps to move a published or official view:

1. Open a view.
2. Use Save as to create an editable copy of the original view.
3. Move the copy view to the desired target business unit (see above steps).
4. Republish or officialize the copy view. 

 

How to create 'crossover content'

'Crossover content' is when an object is related to an object in another business unit, or when an object is part of a view in another business unit. 

Currently, the 'add relationship' dialog and the 'add existing object' to view dialogs only show objects from the same business unit. You can still create crossover content by following the steps below.

Suppose you want to:

• Add a relationship from an object in the business unit BU1 to an object in the business unit BU2 or
• Add an object in BU1 to a view in BU2

1. Move an object from BU1 to BU2.
2. Add a relationship to the object (or add the object to the view).
3. Move the object back from BU2 to BU1.

As an alternate workaround, you can copy/paste objects from different views to a (temporary) view, and then add relationships between those objects on the view. 

1. Open a view in BU1 containing O1.
2. In a different browser tab, open a view in BU2 containing O2.
3. Copy O2 and paste it in the view in BU1.
4. Add a relationship between O1 and O2.

 

Copy business units

It is possible to create copies of an existing business unit in your environment and reuse source objects and relationships across multiple instances of a business unit. This saves you from having to create a whole business unit from scratch and lets you track changes in different (target) copies. 

Make sure you have the Administrator role assigned to be able to perform copying.

This feature in BlueDolphin currently supports copying the following categories from the source business unit:

• ArchiMate objects 
• Data dictionary objects 
• Object and relationship questionnaires (including data).  If an object questionnaire field is used as an object property on a source object, then that property and the data is also copied.
• Relationship labels (including data)
• Default values for any questionnaire field on objects
• Conditional color of objects
• All object properties (including data) except for the AMEFF import identifier property
• Architecture views (including conditional layout)

Ownership of the (target) copy is as follows:

• Objects - the user who initiated the copy operation
• Relationships - the user who initiated the copy operation
• Architecture views - the original owner of the views from the source business unit

The view in the target business unit inherits the same status and sharing from the source view. However, it does not inherit the favorite view status.

 

Follow the steps below to copy business units within your environment.

1. Navigate to the Admin area .

2. Click Business units beta and identify the business unit you want to copy from the list.

3. Click on the tab for it and click the copy icon in the top-right corner .

4. Type a name for the new business unit and confirm by clicking Copy.

The new business unit is now created and visible in the list of available business units.

Note: Copying a business unit (including the master) is a long-running transaction and should be performed in isolation during off-peak hours. Any additional (manual) changes or source processing shouldn't be run in parallel.

 

OData

Business unit (workspace) of an object is available in OData. For more information on OData, please see Using the OData feed.