Applications

During Early Access, Atlas does not impose a plan-based limit on the number of applications you can create. Creating or importing one still requires the appropriate workspace access and valid data.

An application is software that people or processes rely on for a business task. A payroll team uses a payroll system to calculate pay. Its application fact sheet tells you who owns that system, which work it supports and what else would be affected if it were replaced.

For a review covering several systems, follow Assess your application portfolio.

Decide whether something is an application

Ask what work the software supports and what the business can decide to replace as a unit. A missing owner is a gap to follow up. You can create the application with its name and identify the owner later.

On the pilot fact sheet, Type currently reads Business application.

Choose the level of detail

Start with one application per system that has one owner and one plan for its future. Split it when parts have different owners or different futures. If the finance and HR parts of an ERP suite will be replaced at different times, record two applications. Keep one application when modules or services are always released and retired together, even if they run separately.

The level is probably too fine when many applications share the same owner, lifecycle and cost, or when the names describe technical services rather than business use. It is probably too coarse when one record has several owners, or a planned replacement covers only part of it.

Owner and organization

Owner identifies the person who can answer for the application. Organization identifies its primary owning team. For payroll, these could be the head of payroll and the payroll department. In Review mode, your role and ownership determine whether a supported edit goes live or goes to review. See Workspace access and Organizations and ownership.

Find an application

In the pilot Applications list, search by application name, vendor, owner or team. Use the TIME, Criticality and Lifecycle filters together to narrow the list. Select a column heading to sort, then select an application's name to open its fact sheet.

The Owner column shows the person's name and team when known. If Atlas cannot match the recorded email to a person, it displays the email.

Create an application

With permission to create applications, open Applications and select Add application. Only Name is required. In Description, describe the business task in a sentence. Add Vendor, Organization, Owner, Criticality and Hosting as you confirm them.

Use Organization for the team that owns the application and Owner for the person to contact. The team selector shows the parent when one exists. Criticality offers Mission critical, Business critical, Business operational and Administrative. Hosting offers On premise, Cloud, Hybrid and SaaS.

Select Create application to save and open the fact sheet.

When you set Vendor to a provider, Atlas creates an IT component for this application or reuses one uniquely matched in the same workspace and links it to the application. If the match is ambiguous or conflicts with an existing component, the save stops so you can inspect the records.

Read the summary

Use the summary to prepare a conversation with the owner.

Lifecycle describes where the application is today. TIME describes the intended portfolio action. A payroll system can be Active and marked Migrate while it still runs every pay period. Unknown marks missing information. Restricted on annual cost means your access hides the amount.

With edit access, choose Change next to Owner, select a person and choose Save owner. A saved live change offers Undo. An edit made in an active change request is added to that request.

An open change request with an item on the application shows as a chip next to the title: Draft, In revision, Pending review or Approved, not applied, followed by the request's title. Select the chip to open the change request; see Change requests and review.

Follow the lifecycle

The bar on the pilot fact sheet shows the recorded stage and its start date when known. The application stages are Proposed, Active, Phase Out and Retired. With edit access, the pencil next to the bar opens the lifecycle page. There you can record phase dates and compare the phase implied by the dates with the stored stage. In the Retirement Workflow, an administrator approves a retirement proposal. See Lifecycle and dates.

Delete an application

Administrators and architects can delete an application. Atlas archives it rather than removing it: it disappears from the application list and from reads by AI clients, its fact sheet no longer opens, and its links to capabilities are kept. An archived application can be restored for 90 days, after which it is deleted permanently. While an AI use case, a data asset, a release, a repository or another record still points at the application, Atlas refuses the delete and names those references; remove them first. An archived application that gains such a reference later is kept until the reference is gone. Restoring is not yet available in the interface. Archived applications are also omitted from current portfolio summaries, background jobs and AI context.

Assess fit and record TIME

Use TIME to record a portfolio decision. With edit access, you can set it on the classic application edit form. From a pilot fact sheet in Editing live, use More actions then Classic fact sheet.

For a guided assessment, an editor can choose TIME Assessment in the classic application list's row menu, or Run TIME Wizard where it appears on the classic fact sheet. Rate strategic alignment, business value and user satisfaction with the business owner. Rate technical quality, security and maintainability with the team that runs the application. The wizard asks for each rating on a scale of 1 to 5. Check the suggested classification, reasoning and confidence, then choose Confirm & Save if you agree.

Understand the related records

On Data objects, the CRUD column shows which operations the application performs on each object. C means create, R read, U update and D delete. Not recorded means the operations are unknown. A payroll application may create the journal while the finance system only reads it.

With edit access, use the pencil on Data objects, or Link data objects on an empty card. Select objects by data domain on the left and their operations on the right, then choose Done. Undo restores the previous links and operations. A lock marks a link maintained elsewhere. Change the system of record on the data object, or the data carried on the interface. In Review mode, changes to an application you do not own can go to review.

Open Capabilities to see the business work the application supports and IT components to see the technology it uses. Look under Integrations for the sending and receiving systems. Each interface lists its data format when known. The integration's own fact sheet shows the data it carries and the middleware it uses. See Relationships.

With edit access, start a new flow from Integrations. Atlas preselects this application as the source. To add an endpoint, use Add interface on an empty Interfaces card, or Add input or Add output in its Cards view.

Edit an application in a change request

Choose one of your own Draft or Revision requests from Active change request in the Atlas header before editing. The application fact sheet then shows a watermark and status chip. Supported inline edits, including the owner and the data-object links, add items to that request instead of changing the live application. Open Edit request to review the items, or choose Editing live in the header to return to direct editing. Controls for edits the request cannot represent are unavailable while it is active. See Change requests and review.

Create and edit related elements

The Capabilities, IT components and Data objects cards have New and Edit actions. New creates an element and links it to the current application. For a capability, choose an optional parent; its level follows the parent. A new data object is linked as used by the application, without assuming that the application is its system of record or assigning CRUD permissions.

Edit on Capabilities or IT components opens the existing elements in the workspace. Search, then select Link or Unlink. Each change saves immediately; Undo reverses the last successful link change. Data objects keeps its selection and CRUD editor. A failed load or save is shown as an error. If creation succeeds but linking fails, Retry link reuses the created element.

On Integrations, New opens creation with this application preselected as the source. Edit lets you choose a linked integration and opens its editor; each integration row also has an Edit action. With no integrations, New remains available and Edit is disabled. Write actions require permission. Creating related elements and editing capability or IT-component links require Editing live; they are disabled while a change request is active.

Compare a proposed application change with live

When an application is part of a change request, its fact sheet can show Compare with live below the active-request watermark. Read Before, Live and Proposed for each changed field. A Conflict marker calls out a live value that changed after the request item was filed. Open the request from the fact sheet to review its full set of items before deciding.

See the impact of a change

The Impact card on an application fact sheet lists linked applications affected by a change, the capabilities involved, owners to involve, sources for the links and owner facts, and uncertainty reasons. An owner missing from Atlas appears as Unknown, not as an empty name. The count of affected applications comes from the same impact analysis used by a change request; it does not count the selected application itself. On a change request, Impact shows this analysis for each existing application being changed and names other changed elements separately.

Amounts and currency

An annual cost is shown in its own currency. A cost register line keeps the currency and period it was recorded with; an amount entered on the application is in the workspace currency, which an administrator sets under Settings > Workspace. Under the amount, the fact sheet shows what it is in the workspace currency, EUR and USD at the European Central Bank reference rate of the day, with the rate date.

You choose the currency amounts are shown in from the currency menu in the top bar: EUR, USD, DKK, NOK or SEK. Atlas then converts every amount at the ECB reference rate of the day, on fact sheets, lists, the dashboard, reports and PDF exports. Only the view changes, not the stored amounts, and the choice is remembered in your browser. If no rate is available, an amount stays in its own currency. When an administrator changes the workspace currency, Atlas converts the stored amounts that have no currency of their own (application costs, vendor annual spend, technology costs and initiative budgets) at the rate of the day, and shows what will change before the setting is saved.

The application form has four annual cost fields: License, Hosting, Support and Internal FTE. Enter each amount separately. Leave a field blank when its cost is unknown; a blank field is not zero. The application list and card show Not recorded for a missing cost, while a recorded zero remains zero. Existing zero amounts are not changed automatically: confirm them with the application owner before treating them as free.

When you enter a cost, you can type it in another currency, for example DKK 742,000. The field shows the converted amounts as you type and saves the amount in the workspace currency. A converted amount is a reference for comparison, not a booked figure. If no rate is available, Atlas says so instead of showing an unconverted number.

Work with applications from your AI client

A connected client can use search_applications or list_applications to find a record, get_application to read it and get_application_dependencies to trace its recorded connections. For example, ask which applications exchange data with payroll and request the record IDs so you can verify each link. See Connect an AI client.

Before using propose_application_create or propose_changes, check the tools available to the connected identity and the workspace's write policy. Read the returned status and ID to see whether Atlas created an application, applied a change or submitted a proposal for review. To read a text copy of one application, choose More actions and Markdown version on its pilot fact sheet. See From source material to a reviewable change.

Take the landscape to Archi

On the fact sheet, choose More actions and Export to Archi (ArchiMate). The download includes this application and its integration partners in the ArchiMate Model Exchange format. Open Integrations to see the interfaces and flows. Open Layered landscape to see the linked capabilities, processes, organizations and technology. To export the whole landscape from the classic Applications list, choose Export and Export ArchiMate (Archi).

Every element and relation in the file is a record in Atlas and carries its Atlas ID as a property; nothing is generated. Atlas' own model follows SAP LeanIX, so an application service, for example, is not exported as a separate element. In Archi, choose File > Import > Open Exchange XML Model. The file is a copy: change the records in Atlas, not in the file.

Check sources and gaps

The Sources and gaps section shows available evidence and missing information. It lists each summary field that is unknown or has no source, for example Owner is unknown or TIME has no source, and says when lifecycle dates are unknown or no document is linked. A source indicator helps you check the basis for a value. A source on one field should not be read as validation of the whole application record.

Read Sources and evidence before relying on the model for an important decision.

Avoid common modelling mistakes

• One application per service. Several services of your own system that share an owner and a future are one application.
• Infrastructure as applications. A database, runtime or cloud platform is an IT component that applications depend on.
• The integration platform in the middle of every flow. Record the platform as an IT component and each flow as an integration with the platform as middleware.
• A team instead of a person. Organization tells you which team the application belongs to; name the accountable person as Owner as well.
• A retirement date without a handover. Check which teams still use the application, when the last integration will move and who will confirm the handover. Follow the agreed change through its change request.