Essential EA Tool

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Essential EA Tool

+ - 001 Introduction
- Essential Project Home Wedsite
- Essential University
+ - 002 Download and Install Essential Open-Source Packages
- Essential Open Source EA Tool download
- Pre-Requisites
  - 1. Java: ensure version 1.8 or above (I'm using openjdk 11.0.16.1 which is ok)
  - 2. Protege Ontology Editor
    - Only support v3.5, use the package in this site
    - You can still use other Protege version along with this one for your other Ontologies, no conflict within Program Files
    - lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.max set to 2048000000
  - 3. Tomcat, only support v8 or v9
    Essential Viewer can be used with any Java web application server but the installer assumes Tomcat
  - 4. Optional components
    - Database: you can ignore if you don't connect to DB
    - JDBC Driver: for selected DB
- Essential Core components
  - 1. Widgets (v6.7)
    - A set of custom-built plug-ins for the Protege Ontology Editor. Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions.
  - 2. Meta-Model (v6.18)
    - The main repository files for Essential. Save this to a user accessible area such as your Documents folder, unzip and then open using Protege.
    - Rename the pprj file to your desired project name
  - 3. Viewer (v6.18.7)
    - A Java Web Application for publishing, analysing and reporting against enterprise architecture models captured using the Essential Meta-Model. Copy this file to your Tomcat install 'webapps' folder
    - Rename the war file and copy to your active Tomcat webapps folder, wait it extracted
  - 4. Import Utility (v2.8)
    - A Java Web Application for importing existing content from spreadsheets into the Essential repository. Copy this file to your Tomcat install 'webapps' folder
  - 5. Import Utility Example Configuration (v2.0)
    - An example configuration of Import Activities for the Import Utility. Save this to a user accessible area such as your Documents folder and select it from within the Import Utility's System Settings tab, using the "Import Configuration..." button
- Installation Guide
  - Standalone Install
  - Multi-User Install
- Practice after installation
  - 1. Open Meta-Model project in Protege
  - 2. Open Viewer through web browser using viewer URL
  - 3. Connect viewer from Protege and able to publish repository to viewer
+ - 003 Essential Overview
- 1. Getting started (what is Essential?)
  - Anyone in the organisation can help create the enterprise architecture – Essential enables people to capture data without having to understand the business model
  - You capture the facts about the organisation and their inter-relationships; Essential generates views to provide clarity and enable analysis for decision-making
  - Skilled enterprise architects can focus their energies on value add activities
  - You don’t draw pictures, you let Essential create the visualisations
  - Essential uses advanced algorithms to work out where there are potential issues, opportunities and risks
- 2. Essential Information Eco-system
  - Using the Everyone’s Essential Editors – easy to use, zero-training editors that enable the wider business to populate the repository (Note this is Cloud/Docker Only)
  - Via the Import Utility, which allows import of data from Excel spreadsheets. We can provide Launchpad or users can create their own import specifications
  - Via the APIs, which is recommended when other tools master data (load from other systems and enrich in Essential). Cloud/Docker have a range of REST APIs, Open Source has a simple API mechanism
  - Via the Data Capture, this is via Protege for Open Source and via the web Data Capture in Cloud/Docker
- 3. Essential viewer
  - The Essential Viewer has around 140 out of the box views.
- 4. Essential Meta Model Overview
  - Mapped Essential to multiple frameworks, e.g. MODAF, FEAF, and TOGAF
  - 4 layers x 3 views each form total 12 domains in core Meta Model
  - Keep growing the supporting meta models
+ - 004 Start from Business Capability Model
- Reference Business Capability Models
- View: Business Capability Summary
- View: Business Capability Dashboard
  Updated 31 October 2023
  - 1. If the report is not enabled, then enable it on the homepage
    - Go to EA Support > Essential Viewer > Report and find Core: Business Capability Dashboard, click enabled on the homepage
  - 2. Ensure have a root business capability set, this will be a capability that is your org's name or what your org does.
    - In the class tree go to EA Support > Essential Viewer > Report Configuration > Report Constant, find Root Business Capability and set its associated instance slot to your root capability
  - 3. If your application lifecycles do not have colours then make sure you have set colours for the lifecycles
    - Go to EA Support > Utilities > Enumeration and find the Lifecycle Status class.
      
      Look for the 'element styling classes' slot and create a style if one doesn't exist.
      
      In the style set the element colour and element text colours to hex colour (type hex colour into any search engine to get some)
  - 4. Ordering the Capabilities
    - The view looks to see if front/middle/back (FMB) positions have been defined, Launchpad does this and allows you to group by those positions, and then it uses the business capability index slot.
    - If no FMB is defined for the capability then it just uses an index and they go at the top of the view and any capabilities tied to FMB go next.
    - If FMB is defined for a capability then it applies that first and then orders the capabilities within that group based on the index.
    - The FMB is used in some legacy views, we recommend that you just use the business capability index if you are a new user.
    - If you're an existing user using legacy business capability views, this layout will be consistent with those.