Tutorial 7: The Built-in Workspace Dashboard

Across Tutorials 1 through 6, you progressively constructed the architecture for NeoBank — linking strategic goals, business capabilities, microservices, mainframe hosting, security controls, and autonomous AI agents.

When you open any architecture repository in Scapius, you don't start with a blank canvas or need to hand-write SQL queries to know the state of your IT portfolio. Scapius comes with a powerful Built-in Workspace Dashboard (workspace_home) that automatically compiles your entire architecture AST into real-time executive intelligence.

In this final tutorial, you will learn:

1. What the Built-in Workspace Dashboard is and how it works.
2. The 6 Analytic Metric Tiers computed directly from your .ea model.
3. How NeoBank feeds every widget with real, non-trivial data (including Shadow IT detection).
4. How to configure workspace currencies, scoring weights, and risk thresholds via manifest.yaml.
5. How custom views { dashboard ... } compare with the built-in system dashboard.

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1. What is the Built-in Workspace Dashboard?

The Built-in Workspace Dashboard is an out-of-the-box intelligence screen embedded directly into the Scapius Web UI (and exposed via the /api/workspaces/:id/dashboard API endpoint).

Whenever you open a workspace in Scapius:

• The backend parses and indexes the complete multi-file graph.
• It evaluates metadata, costs, scores, lifecycles, threats, and relationships against the workspace's manifest.yaml.
• It renders an interactive, multi-tiered executive dashboard without requiring any hand-written dashboard code.

The Scapius Built-in Workspace Dashboard showing executive briefing cards, TIME distribution, portfolio quadrant, and health indicators

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2. The 6 Analytic Metric Tiers

The built-in dashboard organizes workspace analytics into 6 structured tiers:

Tier 0: Executive Briefing & Headline Cards Strip

At the very top of the dashboard, a strip of headline KPI cards delivers an instant pulse check:

• Modernization Posture: Composite technical fitness percentage across the estate.
• Annual Run Spend: Total cost aggregated across systems, applications, and cloud environments, formatted using the workspace's currency.
• Unmitigated Risks: Immediate count of high or critical STRIDE threats lacking approved mitigating controls.
• AI Governance: Total active agent fleet and proportion with human-in-the-loop guardrails.
• Architecture Debt: Rapid count of orphaned or unmanaged entities.

Tier 1: Estate Shape & Sizing

Provides high-level structural sizing:

• Layer Footprint: Stacked distribution of entities across Strategy, Business, Application, Technology, Security, and Governance.
• TIME Distribution: Donut chart breaking down portfolio health according to the Gartner TIME model:
  • Invest (62%): Cloud-native payments, mobile banking, AI fraud engines.
  • Tolerate (22%): Stable internal services.
  • Migrate (12%): Legacy mainframe core banking (system_core_banking).
  • Eliminate (4%): Outdated voice PBX IVR phone systems.
• Lifecycle Roadmap: Gantt-style timeline visualizing Plan, Build, Run, and Retire phases across active programs.

Tier 2: Strategic Portfolio & Value

Helps CIOs and Enterprise Architects prioritize engineering spend:

• Portfolio Quadrant (Business Value vs. Technical Fit): A 2D scatter matrix plotting systems:
  • Top-Right (High Value / High Fit): Systems to protect and accelerate (e.g. app_mobile_banking).
  • Top-Left (High Value / Low Fit): Critical systems urgently requiring modernization (e.g. system_core_banking).
• Cost Rollup by Layer: Financial spend broken down by architectural tier.
• Strategic Goal Trajectory: Real-time velocity tracking on business goals (e.g. goal_double_customers) and KPI trends.

Tier 3: Risk & Security Posture

Provides CISOs and security architects with continuous threat intelligence:

• STRIDE Threat Landscape: Distribution of threats across Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege.
• Critical Threats & Controls Spotlight: Direct visibility into which threats are mitigated by controls (e.g. control_waf mitigating threat_ddos) and which remain open.
• Vulnerability Breakdown: CVE tracking categorized by CVSS severity (Critical, High, Medium, Low).
• Risk Treatment Progress: Status of risk scenarios categorized as Mitigate, Accept, or Transfer.

Tier 4: Regulatory Compliance & Governance

Tracks institutional readiness against industry mandates:

• Compliance Readiness %: Audit percentage across standards such as PCI DSS 4.0, SOX 404, and ISO 27001.
• Control Implementation Gaps: Surfaces controls marked Planned or Partially Implemented versus Implemented.
• Policy Enforcement: Tracks mandatory vs recommended policy adherence.

Tier 5: AI Governance

Dedicated oversight for autonomous systems and LLMs:

• Agent Fleet Inventory: Catalog of active AI models (e.g. claude-3-5-sonnet, gpt-4o).
• Autonomy vs Oversight: Highlights agents operating autonomously without human-in-the-loop validation (human_in_loop false).
• AI Policy Adherence: Verifies that agents are bound by governance charters (policy_ai_governance).

Tier 6: Structural Health & Architectural Debt

Detects data-quality anomalies and structural risks:

• Top Dependency Hubs: Identifies architectural single points of failure (e.g. system_core_banking with 18 inbound links).
• Cross-Layer Boundary Violations: Verifies that relationships flow cleanly through proper abstraction boundaries.
• Shadow IT & Orphaned Entity Detection: Surfaces disconnected components or systems not assigned to any governed layer.

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3. Deliberate "Mess": Testing Data Quality with Shadow IT

In the NeoBank reference implementation, the model includes a deliberately unmanaged file: application/shadow_it.ea.

neobank/application/shadow_it.ea

// Deliberately unsanctioned application outside any governed architectural layer
app app_unsanctioned_crypto_bot "Shadow Crypto Trading Bot" {
    description "Unapproved internal script trading cryptocurrencies on corporate network"
    risk "Critical"
    internet_facing true

    vulnerability vuln_hardcoded_key "Hardcoded API Secret in Repo" {
        cvss_score 9.8
        severity "Critical"
    }
}

Because app_unsanctioned_crypto_bot has no layer wrapper and no approved relationships, the Tier 6 Architecture Debt widget immediately flags it as an orphaned shadow IT risk, demonstrating Scapius's automated governance vigilance.

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4. Configuring Workspace Intelligence (manifest.yaml)

The built-in dashboard dynamically adapts its currency, composite scoring formulas, and severity thresholds based on manifest.yaml located at the root of your workspace:

neobank/manifest.yaml

name: "Neo Bank Enterprise Architecture"
currency: "USD"

scoring:
  weights:
    business_value: 0.6
    tech_fit: 0.4

governance:
  risk_thresholds:
    critical: 9.0
    high: 7.0
    medium: 4.0

labels:
  time:
    Invest: "Accelerate"
    Migrate: "Modernize"

When you update manifest.yaml:

• Costs across all systems and infrastructure automatically format to $ USD.
• The Portfolio Quadrant weights business_value at 60% and tech_fit at 40%.
• Risk and compliance badges recalculate against your company's risk thresholds.

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5. Built-in Dashboard vs Custom views { dashboard ... }

Scapius supports two complementary dashboard concepts:

Dimension	Built-in Workspace Dashboard (workspace_home)	Custom DSL Dashboard View (dashboard <id>)
How It's Defined	Built into Scapius UI; auto-derived from full workspace AST.	Explicitly authored in .ea code using views { dashboard name { ... } }.
Scope	Enterprise-wide; calculates all 6 metric tiers automatically.	Scoped to a specific audience or subsystem using include / exclude.
Configuration	Configured globally via manifest.yaml.	Configured via DSL properties and view filters.
Primary Use Case	Executive CIO/CTO overview upon opening the workspace.	Departmental reporting (e.g. Credit Card Dashboard, Mortgage Operations).

Custom Dashboard Example

If you want to create a focused dashboard for a specific line of business alongside the built-in home dashboard, declare it in main.ea:

neobank/main.ea (excerpt)

views {
    dashboard retail_banking_dashboard "Retail Banking Operations Dashboard" {
        description "Departmental health scorecard focused exclusively on retail deposits and consumer lending."
        tags ["Departmental", "Retail Banking"]

        include where layer == "Business Architecture"
        include system_core_banking
        include app_mobile_banking

        auto_layout TopToBottom
    }
}

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6. Validate the Entire NeoBank Estate

Run the final validation check:

scapius validate ./neobank

Validation Successful! Workspace 'neo_bank' is valid.
Parsed: 9 files, 1 theme, 1 manifest.
Resolved: 42 entities, 58 relationships, 8 views.
Built-in dashboard data: 100% complete across all 6 tiers.
Zero errors, zero warnings.

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Conclusion & Next Steps

You have now mastered the complete Scapius EA toolchain:

• Starting with a scalable multi-file architecture (neo_bank).
• Structuring multi-layer models connecting Strategy, Business, Application, and Technology.
• Evaluating portfolios with Capability Maps and TIME classification.
• Hardening architectures with Trust Boundaries, STRIDE threat models, and Regulatory Compliance.
• Tracing data across customer Value Streams.
• Integrating Autonomous AI Agents with governance policies.
• Leveraging the Built-in Workspace Dashboard for automated executive visibility.

Check out the Language Reference, explore the CLI Tooling, or deploy your model to the Scapius Web Platform!