Overview
The EA Modeler is a canvas-based tool for building and maintaining your organization’s enterprise architecture. Models are created in ArchiMate 4 (the default notation for enterprise structure), with BPMN 2.0 for process/workflow behaviour and SysML v2 for systems requirements, constraints, interfaces, and verification. They are intended to be implementable — not just decorative diagrams. They connect directly to the products, technology, and operations managed elsewhere in the platform.
Key Concepts
- ArchiMate 4 — The default open-standard notation for enterprise structure, across three layers: Business (capabilities, actors, roles), Application (services, components, interfaces), and Technology (infrastructure, platforms, networks). Best for cross-layer dependencies and strategy alignment.
- BPMN 2.0 — For process and workflow behaviour: sequences, gateways, events, and swimlanes (who does what — human or AI coworker).
- SysML v2 — For systems architecture: requirements, constraints, interfaces, allocations, verification cases, and traceability. An architect-facing viewpoint (see Views & Viewpoints), not a default end-user surface.
- Views and Viewpoints — A viewpoint defines which elements and relationships are relevant for a particular audience. A view is a specific diagram built from that viewpoint.
- Reference Models — Prebuilt architecture patterns (e.g., cloud-native application, integration hub) that can be adapted and incorporated into your own models.
- Value Streams — End-to-end sequences of activities that deliver value to a customer or stakeholder. Modelled in the business layer and traceable to the products and capabilities that enable them.
- Workroom Definitions — Reusable collaboration patterns attached to value streams. Each definition names its portfolio, shape, participants, queues, human triggers, linked process view, and associated running instances.
Workroom Definitions
Open Architecture > Workrooms (/ea/workrooms) to review collaboration from the definition perspective. The page keeps all four portfolios visible, groups each Value Stream Team under its owning portfolio, and links the reusable shape to its process view and operational instances. Define or refine the underlying Value Stream Team when participants, queues, or approval triggers need to change; use Operations > Workrooms to inspect activity created from those definitions.
What You Can Do
- Create and edit architecture views across business, application, and technology layers
- Apply standard ArchiMate, BPMN, or SysML viewpoints, or define custom ones for your audience
- Start from reference models and tailor them to your organization
- Map value streams to the products and capabilities that support them
- Use the AI coworker to generate a draft architecture view from a description
- Select an element to open its Architecture context, then follow the shortest available links to the same concern in related ArchiMate, BPMN, or SysML views
- For projected AI routing elements, open the matching operational evidence and inspect the safe decision inputs, possible outcomes, design version, evidence freshness, and implementation source
- Use Refresh live projections when you are authorized to rebuild governed BPMN, SysML, and ArchiMate views from their canonical sources
AI Coworker Identity
Architecture views may still contain older /ea/agents links from governance
and route projections. Those links are compatibility paths. They now open
/platform/identity/agents, the canonical AI Coworker Identity page for
principal coverage, portable identity metadata, and authorization inspection.
Use the AI Workforce area for everyday coworker discovery and work assignment.
Following a Concern Across Views
Select an element on an architecture canvas and open Architecture context in the inspector. Related viewpoints lists the nearest views that explain the same element or a directly linked concern. Each link names the notation, target view, and link distance so you can see why it is being suggested.
AI routing elements can also offer Open operational evidence. This opens the AI Operations Map in Compare mode, focused on the same routing stage. The architecture remains the designed projection; the Operations Map supplies the observed evidence and calls out gaps rather than treating missing evidence as proof that the design ran.
The Why this decision works this way section deliberately shows only safe metadata. It can include decision inputs such as sensitivity class or provider eligibility, possible outcomes, the design version, implementation status, and the latest evidence time. It never exposes prompt text or protected payload values.