BPMN Shapes & Swimlanes

The BPMN shape library gives you everything for a Business Process Model and Notation diagram: events, activities, gateways, data objects, artifacts and swimlanes. This page covers the parts that behave differently from ordinary shapes: pools and lanes, and sub-processes that expand and collapse.

Where to Find the Shapes

Open the Diagramming panel and expand Shapes > BPMN. The library is grouped into Events, Activity, Artifacts, Swimlanes, Gateway and Data.

The Activity group with the sub-process shapes

Pools and Lanes

A pool represents a participant, a lane a role or system inside it. Swimlanes offers a horizontal and a vertical Pool and matching Lane shapes. A new pool arrives with one lane; drop more lanes into it, or select a lane and use the insert lane above / below buttons on its toolbar. The pool grows around its lanes, and each lane has a − button to collapse it.

A horizontal pool with three lanes; the selected lane shows the insert-lane buttons

• Tasks and events dropped into a lane become members of that lane and move with it.
• Sequence flows between lanes stay attached when a lane is resized.
• A pool can be horizontal or vertical. The orientation is read from the lanes it holds.

The simplified swimlane layouts in 26.1 keep lanes aligned and equally sized without manual adjustment. See also Kanban Board, which uses the same lane mechanics for task boards.

Sub-Processes

A sub-process is an activity that contains a process of its own. The library ships around 20 sub-process shapes:

Group	Shapes
Plain	Sub Process, Ad-hoc Sub Process, Event Sub Process
Interrupting event sub-process	Message, Timer, Conditional, Signal, Multiple, Parallel Multiple, Escalation, Error, Compensation
Non-interrupting event sub-process	Message, Timer, Conditional, Signal, Multiple, Parallel Multiple, Escalation

Collapse a sub-process to a single task, expand it to see the process inside

Expanding and Collapsing

Every sub-process shape has a − / + button on its bottom edge.

• Collapsed — the shape is the size of a task and shows only its name. The content inside is kept.
• Expanded — the shape grows to show the tasks, events and flows inside it.

Relationships to and from elements inside the sub-process stay visible in the expanded state and reconnect to the sub-process border when it is collapsed.

Building the Inner Process

Drop tasks, events and gateways into an expanded sub-process and connect them as usual. Paste works too: copy a set of elements and paste them while the sub-process is selected.

Importing BPMN Files

Process diagrams exported from other tools as BPMN 2.0 XML can be imported through the Migrator. Sub-processes, pools and lanes are recognised, and a file with several diagrams becomes several frames on one board.

A BPMN 2.0 file after import: pool, three lanes, a gateway and an expanded sub-process

Letting the AI Draw It

Describe the process and its actors and the AI Assistant builds the pool, lanes, tasks and gateways for you.

Related

• Shape Libraries — all bundled libraries
• Grouping — how containers and members behave
• Relationships — sequence flows and message flows