BPMN - reusable process over several pools

1
votes

I am using the Enterprise Architect and it seems like what I want to model with BPMN 2.0 is forbidden, but I just don't get it, maybe someone can help.

According to BMPN specs, an activity cannot be used in several pools, as it is always bound to one pool. BUT activities can be marked as "call activities", which actually can have their own pools and be reused, right? Meaning if I have a sub-process marked as a call activity, using its own pool, shouldn't I be able to use this one in different pools as well?

To clarify what I need to model: In a warehouse, I have several processes, all with different pools. I need to use pools and not lanes, as they can only communicate via messages, which would not be allowed in one pool (right?). Now there is one process, which all other processes can result in, the general "error handling". But now matter what I try, I cannot use this activity more than once, the EA keeps crashing (version 10) or telling me I can only use sequence flows within one pool (version 11).

Can anyone help me understand which part of BPMN I did not get correctly here?

Thanks in advance

1
enterprise-architectbpmn

1 Answers

0
votes

I cannot answer why Enterprise Architecture is crashing/ not supporting your modelling approach, but I can assure that referencing a global task or another process via call activities from different pools is valid BPMN 2.0. The specification (p 183 ff/213 ff in PDF doc: Call Activities) does not mention restrictions regarding the pools from which global tasks can be referenced (it wouldn't make sense to put such a restriction on referencing something "global", either) and other modeling tools seem to support your approach as well. I just tested the case with Signavio and it works fine, the syntax checker is not throwing any error.

Another approach for solving your case might be referencing another process as Link Intermediate Events (p 183/213 in PDF doc). However, I don't know if this will be possible using the Enterprise Architect, but it might be worth a try.