Useful Terms

The following terms are used in this document:

• Application

  A collection of elements that work together to solve a business requirement, such as managing a team's work tasks or tracking IT support calls. Applications follow at least one workflow process and include projects, fields, forms, reports, and notifications. Applications are organized by tabs on the toolbar, with each tab representing a single application.

• Application Tab

  Application tabs filter items and certain features to a specific application. For example, when you submit new items, the projects available to you are limited to those associated with the selected Application tab.

• Application Workflow

  A collection of states, transitions, and fields that define an interactive business process. All primary items follow a workflow process.

• Project

  A collection of primary items that follow a specific workflow process. Projects are displayed in a hierarchy. A project is a means for organizing items, enabling you to easily submit and find primary items.

• Primary Item

  Items, such as change requests and development tasks, that are submitted into projects and that follow an application workflow process.

• Auxiliary Item

  Refers to items that are stored in auxiliary tables. Auxiliary items support, but do not follow, an application workflow process. Auxiliary items are useful because they store information that can be referred to repeatedly by one or more applications. Contact and company records are examples of auxiliary items.

• States

  A key element of application workflows, states are positions that a primary item resides in while moving through the workflow process. States can also be considered a stopping point along a workflow's path.

• Transitions

  A key element of application workflows, transitions activate a primary item's movement from state to state in the workflow process.

• Primary Owner

  To provide accountability for primary items, a primary owner is designated for each state in the workflow. This ensures that primary items always have one user who is responsible for them while they reside in each state.

• Secondary Owner

  Allows one or more users to be responsible for items in a particular state. For example, one state may be configured as a queue into which all new IT Incidents are submitted, allowing users who are specified as secondary owners to transition items from the queue into their inbox.

• Forms

  The pages from which you submit, transition, and update items.