Entity Overview

In Application Portfolio Management (APM), entities are the means by which actions and processes are initiated and tracked. They are the building blocks of your application portfolio. Entities contain all of the information necessary to take a series of actions and move through a workflow. They are used to identify objects and designate the relationships and interactions within an organization. An APM entity is a type of Project and Portfolio Management Center (PPM) request.

The following entities can be part of the application portfolio:

  • Application. A software application or program that implements a business process or function in your organization. An application entity can be made up of one or more distinct services.

  • Application set. A user-defined grouping of application entities.

  • Location. A distinct and unambiguous location of an application, server, or a grouping of locations.

  • Process. A standard set of actions or operations performed by the business.

  • Roadmap. A roadmap for an individual application/service, or a group of applications/services, including lifecycle statuses (roadmap phases) and milestones.

  • Server. A physical or virtual machine.

  • Survey registration. A query sent to users that requests data about applications to help with their analysis.

  • Transformation proposal. A consolidation of information used to make a decision about a proposed project.

  • Workstream. A collection of resources working towards a common goal on a portion of the application or process portfolio.

Additionally, business objectives and organization units, created in PPM, can be part of your application portfolio.

  • Business objective. The result that the organization intends to achieve. For more information about business objectives, see the Program Management User Guide.

  • Organization unit. A business unit, department, or group within an organization. For more information about organization units, see the  Resource Management User Guide.

For detailed descriptions of each of the APM entities, see Entities.

To interact with an entity, you use the associated detail page. The detail page for an entity contains all of the information about the entity. Also, the detail page is where decisions and actions that pertain to the entity are executed. For information about the application entity detail page, see the Application Portfolio Management User's Guide. The entity detail page for an application entity is similar to the detail page for a request. For descriptions of the main sections on a request detail page, see the Demand Management User Guide.