Lifecycle Catalog

Overview

Lifecycle Catalog provides provider lifecycle information for IT Components enabling users to understand technology obsolescence risks for their hardware and software and make better upgrade decisions.

Lifecycle Catalog enables LeanIX customers to use standardized IT Component names (Provider Name + Product Name + Version + Edition) and attach the correct provider lifecycles. Lifecycle Catalog has a dedicated team and an established process to ensure continuous updates.

Key Features

Lifecycle Catalog offers a comprehensive list of attributes for your IT components, its lifecycles, provider, and tech category information.

Name: name normalization (standard format: Provider Name + Product Name + Edition+ Version)
Version: specific version of the component
Version Group: to group consecutive versions
Provider: Manufacturer, seller of the component
Lifecycles: Plan, Phase-in, Active, Phase-out, End-of-life
Tech Category
URLs: to prove authenticity of lifecycles
Support Type: community/enterprise, free/paid
Active Support: flag denoting whether the product has active support from the provider
Support Policies: support schedule by Provider
As of Date when data was updated by LeanIX
Description of product from its website
Websites of product & provider
LeanIX Best Practice Tech Category

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Dates are provided whenever they are available on the provider's website

LeanIX recommends the TBM v4 Solutions layer as a best practice taxonomy in EAM. To adopt TBM, refer to this

Modelling Fact Sheets for Lifecycle Catalog

Lifecycle Catalog does not allow multiple Fact Sheets to be linked to the same entry on the Catalog as this would create duplicates and display name conflicts in workspaces.
One workaround to model multiple instances of the same IT Component Fact Sheet would be to create an abstract parent entry and link it to the Catalog. Then all instances of the same IT Component can be modelled as child Fact Sheets.

Lifecycle Catalog Configuration

By linking the Lifecycle Catalog, you can get description, version and lifecycle information about the IT Component from the Catalog, without the worry of maintaining and updating that information.

Go to Administration.
Click on Reference Catalogs on the left pane.
Select the fields you would like to Sync (Description, Name, Version, Lifecycles) from Lifecycle Catalog into your Fact Sheet.
Select the relations to the linked IT Component (Provider, Tech Category) to add from Lifecycle Catalog.
Click Save.

Link into Lifecycle Catalog

There are several ways to link Lifecycle Catalog - from Inventory, from an IT Component Fact Sheet, while creating a new IT Component Fact Sheet - as detailed below.

Once this linking is successful for a given IT Component Fact Sheet, all updates on the Fact Sheet are audited in the "Last Update" Section of the Fact Sheet. The Status update is listed against the user who performed the linking action. As a consequence of the linking, all updates on the IT Component Fact Sheet are made by the System User "reference-data"

1. Link Lifecycle Catalog via Bulk Linking

Bulk Linking for Lifecycle Catalog aims to help you become more efficient in automatically updating the life cycle and the end-of-support information for your IT Components. Bulk Linking will help you achieve that by allowing you to do rapid actions on the Lifecycle Catalog page for all your IT Components that are listed in your Inventory. Some of the key features of Bulk Linking are:

Filter by Recommendation Confidence: Filter for the best match recommendations from the Catalog

Linking to Lifecycle Catalog: quickly link your Fact Sheet to the Catalog in one place

Report Missing Data: directly report missing data from the Catalog panel in Live Workspaces

Mark as Ignored: ignore linkage for desired Fact Sheet, depends on your needs

Bulk Linking provides intelligent recommendations for best-matching references for your Lifecycle IT Component Fact Sheets that are not yet linked to the Lifecycle Catalog.

Open “Lifecycle Catalog” from the Inventory page
You will see the different IT Component Fact Sheets organized into tabs, by their respective Catalog Status
Counts of IT Components in each tab are visible next to the tab heading

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Any facet filters applied in Inventory will be applied to the Bulk linking page

Unlinked Fact Sheets Tab

In the Unlinked Fact Sheets tab you can get:

All IT Component Fact Sheets, as filtered from Inventory, whose Catalog Status is 'Unlinked'
A quick overview of major details of the customer Fact Sheet and corresponding recommendations provided, on expanding each row
You can click on the Search bar to see alternate recommendations/search for a new query word
You can perform certain actions directly from the Unlinked Fact sheets tab, like:
- Filter ONLY for those fact sheets that have "Very High" and/or "High" Confidence recommendations matches in the Catalog
- Select ALL the filtered fact sheets and bulk-link them to the corresponding recommendations
- Link to Recommended Fact Sheet or alternate selected Fact Sheet
- Report Missing Data in Live Workspaces
- Preview selected Fact Sheet
- Ignore selected Fact Sheet

Missing Request Raised Tab

In the Missing Request tab, you can see all the IT Component Fact Sheets, as filtered from Inventory, where the information from the Catalog Status is Missing. You can also see a quick overview of the Fact Sheet from where the request was raised.
Here is a brief overview of the Request Status:

Request Status
Requestor Details
Timestamp, when the request was raised
Request details as filled in the form

This also allows you to have the option to update the request.

Ignored Fact Sheets Tab

In the Ignored Fact Sheets tab you can see all IT Component Fact Sheets, as filtered from Inventory, where Catalog Status is Ignored. You can also see a quick overview of the Fact Sheet where it is marked Ignored. With this, you have the option to search recommendations and link/preview/report missing data on a selected Fact Sheet.

When to "Ignore"?

You can use the Ignore feature when:
You want to break the Lifecycle Catalog linking. "Ignore" is equivalent to breaking the Lifecycle Catalog link.
Fact Sheets can be marked as ignored if it is proprietary products that you do NOT expect the Catalog to have information about the product.
You want to overwrite the information.

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Warning
Continuous updates from Lifecycle Catalog will not flow through to your Fact Sheet from Lifecycle Catalog, once ignored.

Linked Fact Sheets Tab

In the Linked Fact Sheets tab, you can see all IT Component Fact Sheets, as filtered from Inventory, where Catalog Status is Linked. You also see a quick overview of the Fact Sheet where it is linked and the corresponding Component on the Catalog.

You can perform certain actions directly from Linked Fact Sheets Tab, including:

Search recommendations and Change link to alternate selected Fact Sheet
Preview selected Fact Sheet
Ignore selected Fact Sheet
Report Missing Data in Live workspaces

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Refresh button (or) switching tabs, after an action is performed, moves IT Component Fact Sheets to the right tab

2. Link Lifecycle Catalog via Fact Sheet Detail Page

To start getting information from the Lifecycle Catalog into your IT Component Fact Sheet,

Open IT Component Fact Sheet on your workspace
Click on the ‘Lifecycle Catalog’ at the top of the right sidebar.
You are directed to the Lifecycle Catalog page with pre-filled information from your Fact Sheet. Choose the correct search result from the Lifecycle Catalog preview.
Once you find the correct Lifecycle Catalog Fact Sheet, click Link to Fact Sheet. Now, your IT Component Fact Sheet is updated with Lifecycle Catalog information.
You can also Report Missing data by filling in the Missing Request form with the necessary details in Live workspaces. Once our research team has completed the research, they will link the Fact Sheet from which the request was raised to the corresponding entry on the catalog.

3. Import from Lifecycle Catalog during Fact Sheet Creation

When a new IT Component Fact Sheet is created in the workspace, you can now link it to Lifecycle Catalog in the Fact Sheet creation dialog.

Go to Inventory
Create a new Fact Sheet under Actions, on the right side pane
Choose the "IT Component" Fact Sheet type and start typing the name of the IT Component you wish to import from the Lifecycle Catalog
You will now see a "Recommendations from Reference Catalog" section. Select the name from the list to view the Description and Lifecycle details of the entry from the Lifecycle Catalog
Click on "Create and Link" to import Fact Sheet from the lifecycle catalog into your workspace. This newly created Fact Sheet will now have details from Lifecycle Catalog, as configured in the Admin > Reference Catalogs section