Gateways in models with several pools / lanes

[Reglindis Koch]

I'm new to BPMN. I have a gateway in lane Agent. Do I have to set this gateways in other lanes pools like I did in this model?

Thanks for support!

[Anthony Horner]

Hi Reglindis,

Again, without knowledge of the what is being modelled and going on what is the diagram,  I'd ask the following questions-

The agent's actions tasks "Publish Registration" and "Reject Registration" essentially different?  I'm inferring that the Agent is updating the system with the results of the check.  That task could be the same whether the registration is accepted or failed it is only the data which is different (basicaly "pass" or fail")?

If that is the case then you only need one task like "update user check" and then pass control back to the system.

Continuing with this, then for the system would check result and based on the pass/fail would determine which path to take.

If I guessed wrong on the nature of the agent's tasks and that they are significantly different then you could have the gateway to separate the paths but I wouldn't join the paths afterwards, there doesn't seem like any need to. 

But then, I'd also look at not having a gateway for the system swim lane either, The control would pass to whichever task received the control and after sending an email to the user the process would end (no need to join anything up).

Hope this helps, get in contact if you need any further explanation.

Kind regards,

Anthony

[Phil McNicol]

Hi Reglindis,

I'd say, looking at the Agent swim-lane, that there is no point in the merge exclusive gateway and subsequent end event as no process token will ever get to them. The value of the merge exclusive gateways in the other swim-lanes is that you cut down on the number of end events you would need to show without them.

As an aside, I'd also suggest you probably shouldn't have the start event in the Agent swim-lane. The swim-lanes in the MSR Registering pool are a way of documenting/showing who performs tasks in a process i.e. they are not representative of different processes and so do not require start events. The MSR Registering pool represents a process that is independent of the process represented by the User pool. Both processes (pools) need to have a start event and at least one end event. I suspect the likely behaviour is that the MSR Registering process does not start for the sake of starting, it starts when it receives a message that the user has performed a registration. If that is the case then the none start event could be replaced with a message start event and the message flow from the perform registration task could be connected to the message start event.

Phil McNicol