Legend

Creating and Managing Agents

Agents represent the human side of your organization. Keeping them accurate is what lets the map answer ownership questions with confidence. This page covers creating people and teams, assigning ownership, and maintaining Agents as your organization changes.

Creating a team

  1. Open the Agents view and choose the option to create a new Agent.
  2. Choose the team type and give the team a clear, recognizable name.
  3. Add a short description that says what the team is responsible for.
  4. Save the team. You can add members and ownership next.

Creating a person

  1. From the Agents view, create a new Agent and choose the person type.
  2. Enter the person’s name and, if useful, their role or title.
  3. Record which team or teams the person belongs to.
  4. Save the person. They can now be set as an owner on Landmarks.

Screenshot: the Agent editor showing a person with their team membership set.

Assigning ownership

Ownership is the relationship between an Agent and the Landmarks it is responsible for. Assign an owner to each important Landmark so there is always a clear answer to "who do I ask about this?"

  1. Open the Landmark you want to assign an owner to.
  2. Set the owner to the appropriate person or team.
  3. Prefer a team as owner for anything that should outlive an individual’s tenure.
  4. Save the change; the ownership now shows on both the Landmark and the Agent.

People and teams: which to use

  • Use a team as owner when responsibility is shared or when it should survive people moving on.
  • Use a person as owner when there is a single clear point of contact.
  • When in doubt, assign the team and note the current point of contact in the description.

Keeping Agents current

People change teams and responsibilities shift. A map people trust gets used, and a map that is out of date quietly gets ignored, so it is worth a light, regular review.

  1. On a schedule that suits you, for example quarterly, review your teams and their members.
  2. Reassign ownership for anything whose owner has changed.
  3. Archive or remove Agents that no longer exist so search stays clean.