Business Process Diagrams (Analysis)

A business process diagram (or process flow diagram) provides a graphical view of the control flow (the sequence of execution) or data flow (the exchange of data) between processes at any level in your system.

The business process diagram is the core BPM diagram, which lets you:

Trace the choreography of processes through flows from one or more starts through a sequence of sub-processes, decisions, synchronizations, and resources to one or more ends. The parent process being analyzed in the diagram must wait for the end of all its sub-processes before it terminates.
Avoid unassigned tasks and duplicated assignments by placing processes in organization unit swimlanes (see Attaching Processes to Organization Units).
Analyze how data flows through a system via:
- Message formats on flows – To define exchange formats for large amounts of data that transit between processes, usually defined by a DTD or an XSD (see Message Formats (BPM)).
- Data on Flows - To model data (which can be associated with objects defined in a data model or OOM) without specifying its format (see Data (BPM)).
- Data CRUD – To specify the actions (create, read, update and delete) that a process can perform on data (see Data and Resource CRUD Matrices).
Note: The data flow diagram helps you analyzing data exchange between processes (see Data Flow Diagram (DFD)).
Model the implementation of processes (see Implementing Processes)

A business process diagram can be created directly under the model root, or inside a package or decomposed process.

Note: To create a business process diagram in an existing analysis BPM, right-click the model in the Browser and select New > Business Process Diagram. To create a new model, select File > New Model, choose Business Process Model as the model type and Business Process Diagram as the first diagram, and then click OK.

In this example, the processing of an order proceeds differently depending on whether or not it is a corporate order. Both possible paths are reunited in the Confirm Order process:

PowerDesigner supports all the objects necessary to build analysis business process diagrams:

Object	Tool	Symbol	Description
Process			Task to perform (see Processes (BPM)).
Organization unit			Organization, service or person that is responsible for a process (see Organization Units ( BPM)).
Flow			Path of the control flow between processes (see Flows (BPM )).
Decision			Decision to take when several flow paths are possible. Only one path will be triggered at execution time (see Decisions (BPM )).
Synchronization			Enables synchronization of flows between two or more concurrent actions or allows the design of a split (see Synchronizations (BPM )).
Start			Starting point of the processes described in the choreography diagram (see Starts and Ends (BPM )).
End			Termination point of the processes described in the choreography diagram (see Starts and Ends (BPM )).
Message format	None		Format definition of data exchanged between processes (see Message Formats (BPM)).
Data	None	None	Piece of information exchanged between processes (see Data (BPM)).
Resource			Storage unit of abstract data circulating within the model, which is accessed by a process to perform actions (see Resources (BPM)).
Resource flow			Access of a process to a resource (see Resource Flows (BPM)).