Application category

[YakupT]

Hi Community,

Thanks to a helpful suggestion from @M Iftikhar we now know how to set the "Application category" field to optional.

But we are now considering not using the "Application category" field at all and instead classifying Business Applications using other fields such as "Business Unit" or "Department".
Before we move forward with this approach, we’d like to understand if there are any known implications—especially in the context of the Common Service Data Model (CSDM)—when "Application category" is not used. Could this impact reporting, service mapping, or other integrations within the CMDB or Service Portfolio?

We’d appreciate any insights or experiences from others who have taken a similar approach.

Thanks and Regards

[Mathew Hillyard]

Hi @YakupT 

In seeing this field that should mean you are licensed for Enterprise Architecture.

It is one of quite a few grouping fields on business application  (e.g. Architecture type, Application family) that is used in EA Workspace for visualisations. 

I don’t believe there is any logic relying on Application Category but I don’t recommend not using it. It’s a table whose records belong to one or more Application Category Groups (also a table). It’s one of the ways you get to understand your application landscape (pun intended, it was/is the name of an APM dashboard). Its primary purpose is to understand which apps belong to the same categories to help with app rationalisation. You could argue that Business Capabilities perform a similar function, but I normally look to build out categories near the beginning of an EA project (application inventory); capabilities linked to business services tends to take longer for most organisations.

I hope this helps!

Mat