Product

Introducing style templates

Mark Crawshaw
Mark Crawshaw
Nov 3, 2022
-
5
min read

Today, we’re introducing templates for software map styles. The Aplas style system can be challenging to master, but it can also be rewarding when done right. Our new style templating system provides a starting point for many common use-cases and can be a great way to build your understanding through example.

Aplas application cost template
Our new financial cost template stacking infrastructure, software and people cost per application.

Who is it for?

Anyone seeking to tell stories upon a software landscape. This might be to inform or persuade an audience upon anything related to software architecture. You may be seeking to use an out-of-the-box style using the best visualisation practices, or looking for a starting point for your own bespoke style.

The new templates

In our initial release, we’ve included 9 unique templates, covering a wide range of business use-cases. Each template uses our best-practices for building clear, functional styles based on common industry use-cases.

Starter

Includes base layers that are a good place to start for most styles.

Aplas starter style template

App Risk Rating

Template that highlights the risk rating of each app.

Aplas risk rating style template

App Business Criticality

Use for enterprise architects looking to colour applications based on their business criticality attribute.

Aplas business criticality style template

App Functional Fit

Useful for enterprise architecturs looking to colour applications based on their functional fit attribute.

Aplas functional fit style template

App Technical Fit

Useful for enterprise architects looking to colour applications based on their technical fit attribute.

Aplas technical fit style template

App Alignment

Brings together LeanIX attributes of functional/technical fit with criticality. Read more about software mapping with LeanIX.

Aplas app alignment style template

App Completeness

Review the completion % and quality seal of LeanIX application fact sheets.

Aplas app completeness style template

App Cost

Financial view that extrude application cylinders to show cost in 3D.

Aplas app cost style template

App Hosting Location

Infrastructure template that highlights the hosting location of each app.

Aplas app hosting location style template

How it works

Create a new style using a template, then customise using the style designer.

  1. Open studio style area and click to create a new style.
  2. Enter the basics, name and index.
  3. Select your template from the list.
  4. Select light or dark theme.
  5. (Optional) map custom fields. Hint: if you're using our sample index data, fields will map automatically.
  6. Open the style designer and review for any mapping issues. For example, if you have a different set of risk severity levels to our sample data, you will need to track down the layer that maps value to colour to make the appropriate updates.
  7. Publish our stylemap inteface to share with your organization.