Use the BWL API to Synchronise the Glossary with Source Systems

It can be desirable to use values from an external system in the Glossary. This could be an Enterprise Architecture system, a Configuration Management Database or a Governance and Compliance Registry.

Property values in Blueworks Live have a single field. If the source system uses multiple fields to represent the item required in BWL consider concatenation into a single value.

The following sequence can be used to synchronise glossary values with an external system.

Export the values held in BWL for the chosen property.

The values can be exported using the GET/glossary-values API. This will produce a list in JSON format.

Create a list of the required values from the source system

Export the required values from the source system. If the source system has multiple fields to represent the information required these should be concatenated. The result of this should be a list of the values required in the Blueworks live Glossary. 

Compare the two lists and create a merged list

The list retrieved from Blueworks live and the list from the source system must now be compared. The following approach is suggested:

• If a value is on both lists keep the BWL value
• If a value is only on the source system list, add that value to the converged list
• If a value is not on the source system list mark it by adding “to be deleted” and generate another list detailing the value and the user who created from the GET/glossary-values BWL API.

An “Extract, Transform and Load” system would be ideal for this stage.

Replace the values in the BWL glossary with the merged list

Once a converged list has been generated the BWL Glossary can be updated using the PUT/glossary-values API. This API requires a list of values in JSON format. 

Remove unwanted values

Use the list of values to be deleted to contact users and request that they change the values that they have used or agree to them being merged with preferred values.

In Summary

Blueworks Live can be synchronised with external data sources. The Blueworks Live API provides operations to help implement this.