In BPMN, the most common way information is provided to a process from an external source is via a message. Incoming messages are indicated in the diagram by a dashed arrow connector called a message flow, with its tail on a black-box pool or a message node in another process pool and its arrow on a message node in the receiving process, either an activity or message event. In our BPMN Method and …
A critical piece of what makes DMN accessible to business users is its expression language FEEL. FEEL variable names are business-friendly. Because they are simply the labels of the shapes in the Decision Requirements Diagram (DRD), FEEL names may contain spaces and other punctuation not allowed by other expression languages. OK, you already know this. But when you publish a DMN model as a …
BPMN's advocates - myself included - like to proclaim that the language allows non-programmers to define executable processes themselves. But that's only one-third true. Yes, in BPMN 2.0 the executable process steps through the shapes of the diagram as drawn by the modeler. That in itself was a monumental achievement a decade ago. "What you model is what you execute," we liked to say. But it left …
It's now 10 years since finalization of BPMN 2.0, the acknowledged standard business process description language. BPMN has been widely adopted, by tool vendors and end users alike, but there are still some folks just discovering it for the first time. Because of BPMN's outward similarity to traditional swimlane flowcharts, many of those users think they understand BPMN but are making some …
They used to say Seinfeld was a show about Nothing. But given its enduring influence on popular culture, Nothing is clearly not nothing. Attention must be paid. In DMN, as well, Nothing demands attention. In simple models like the ones we study in my DMN Method and Style Basics and Advanced training, it doesn't come up. But in many real-world decision models, Nothing pops up all over the place, …
One of the basic principles of DMN is that decision services are stateless, meaning that given the same set of input data values, the service output will always be the same. But sometimes it is convenient to break that rule with tool-specific extensions. For example, in Trisotech Decision Modeler the FEEL built-in functions Today and Now, which return the current date and date/time, respectively, …
Last time I talked about how information is passed to a BPMN process from outside. All modelers need to understand that. This month I'm going to talk about data inside a BPMN process. If you are a typical process modeler, this is something you can usually safely ignore, because it pertains only to executable models. But recently it came up in a question from a former student, and I see there was …
One aspect of BPMN that usually surprises newbies is attention to what entities or actors are inside the process vs outside. In traditional flowcharting, for example, the Customer is often represented as a swimlane in the Seller's process, but not so in BPMN. A BPMN process represents one participant's view of the steps, that of the process automation engine... no matter that few BPMN models are …
Last month I provided a brief overview of the Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) standard. As it does for BPMN, Method and Style provides CMMN with additional diagrammatic conventions aimed at making the logic understandable from the printed diagrams alone. These conventions are formulated as "style rules" that can be applied as validation in a CMMN tool, such as Trisotech Case Modeler. As …
They said it would never happen, but it has. CMMN Method and Style is now available. Here are the Table of Contents and Preface. Table of Contents Preface. v Method and Style. vi BPMN Method and Style. vi CMMN Method and Style. vii Structure of the Book. vii Acknowledgments ix 1. What Is CMMN?. 1 What Is Case Management?. 1 Applications of Case Management. 2 Evolution of Case Management. 3 CMMN …