Diagram Types

The Business Process Model and Notation standard comprises four types of diagrams that you use to describe the interactions between two or more business entities or to describe the Activities and Tasks that make up a discrete processes within an entity such as an organization or one of its divisions or departments. The Business Process diagram is the most ubiquitous of these and resembles a traditional flowchart but with richer semantics and the ability to generate Business Process Execution Language directly from a well-formed diagram. You use these other diagrams to describe or specify the way two or more entities (Participants) interact by exchanging messages. These diagram are instrumental in visualizing business to business interactions and allow an organization to describe its internal processes ensuring they are compliant with the message flows required for communication with other entities.

You can create BPMN elements and relationships on diagrams in BPMN 2.0 and BPEL formats using the BPMN 2.0 pages of the Diagram Toolbox.

Access

Use any of the methods outlined here to display the Diagram Toolbox, then click on to display the 'Find Toolbox Item' dialog and specify 'BPMN 2.0'.

Diagram Type Toolboxes

Enterprise Architect provides a set of pages for each of these BPMN 2.0 diagram types: