Pools and Lanes (BPMN Descriptive)

Pools represent companies, departments, or roles. Lanes represent sub-entities within these organizations and appear as swimlanes inside the pool. Many BPMN diagrams contain one or more pools, with all the other objects placed in the lanes of these pools.

Note Pools can be vertical (top to bottom) or horizontal (left to right). You can change the orientation of your diagram (if it does not contain any pools) by selecting Start of the navigation path

Change Pool to Horizontal/Vertical End of the navigation path

To create a pool, click the Pool/Lane tool to select it, and then click in empty space in the diagram. A start is automatically created in the pool (see Start and End Events (BPMN Descriptive)).

A single pool in a diagram generally represents the organization:

To add a lane to a pool, click the Pool/Lane tool to select it, and then hover over an existing pool in the diagram. A green line will appear to show where the lane will be added. Click to create the lane in this position.

Each lane in the primary pool represents a department or other sub-entity within the organization:

BPMN diagrams may contain a second pool to represent a partner, such as a customer or supplier with whom the organization interacts. To create a second pool, click the Pool/Lane tool to select it, and then click in empty space in the diagram:

Since you generally will not know the details of a partner's processes, the second pool is commonly treated as a "black box". No tasks or other objects are created within it, and it is linked to the first pool only via message flows.

Note You can drag lanes from one pool to another, or into empty space to create a new pool, and lanes can be reused and appear in multiple different pools.

Pools and lanes can have the following properties:

Property	Description
Name/Code/Comment	Identify the object. The name should clearly convey the object's purpose to non-technical users, while the code, which is used for generating code or scripts, may be abbreviated, and should not normally include spaces. You can optionally add a comment to provide more detailed information about the object. By default the code is generated from the name by applying the naming conventions specified in the model options. To decouple name-code synchronization, click to release the = button to the right of the Code field.
Multi-instance	[pools] The pool represents multiple instances of the specified role.

Property

Description

Name/Code/Comment

Identify the object. The name should clearly convey the object's purpose to non-technical users, while the code, which is used for generating code or scripts, may be abbreviated, and should not normally include spaces. You can optionally add a comment to provide more detailed information about the object. By default the code is generated from the name by applying the naming conventions specified in the model options. To decouple name-code synchronization, click to release the = button to the right of the Code field.

Multi-instance

[pools] The pool represents multiple instances of the specified role.