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Definition

There are two ways of grouping modeling elements through swim lanes:

  • Pools

  • Lanes

Pools

You create business processes in pools. There is always at least one pool that is the default pool. It is automatically created when you model a process in the process composer .

A pool represents a participant in a process. A participant can be a specific business entity, for example a company. It can be also a more general business role, for example a buyer, seller, or manufacturer.

If your process has more participants you create one pool for each participant. But at least one and only one pool can be active at a moment. In the active pool you actually model the process.

The passive pool contains external activities, which are relevant to the process in the active pool. These external activities do not form an end-to-end process because they are only a subset of such an end-to-end process.

Note

You have to define pool administrators for the active pool. For more information, see Defining Process Participants Using Pools .

A pool acts as a container for a sequence flow between activities. The sequence flow can cross the boundaries between lanes of a pool, but cannot cross the boundaries of a pool. The interaction between pools, for example in a business-to-business context, is shown through message flow.

Lanes

A lane is a sub partition within a pool. Each pool has at least one lane. This lane is automatically created when you model a process in a pool. The default pool has also a default lane. Lanes are used to organize and categorize activities within a pool. Lanes represent internal roles, for example account manager, or systems, for example an enterprise application or an internal department, for example shipping.

The following picture shows the process 'Business Trip Approval'. The process is modeled in one pool with the name 'Business Trip Approval.' The activities and events of the process are organized in two lanes. One lane represents the role 'Employee' and the other lane represents the role 'Manager'. The activities and events are connected within a lane and across the lane boundary with a sequence flow.

You can define potential owners of tasks on lane level. This potential owner setting applies to all tasks in the lane and overrides their potential owner settings. For more information, see Defining Potential Owners .