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Whether you need standalone documentation of enterprise business processes, or business process diagrams to support a software development project, you’ll find UModel® 2012 Enterprise Edition is an outstanding tool to draw Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) diagrams.

Business Process Modeling Notation is a graphical standard for creating flow chart-like diagrams that are readily understandable by all business stakeholders including business analysts, technical developers, and business managers. The BPMN standard is maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG), the same organization that administers UML.

In today’s complex global marketplace, business processes can be coordinated within a single enterprise or across entire industries. As communication supporting various business activities accelerates, it becomes more and more critical to have a standard modeling system that can be easily read and understood by a variety of users at a broad range of levels within business organizations, yet can be used to represent complex processes involving multiple parties or enterprises.

UModel® 2012 supports both BPMN 1.0 and BPMN 2.0 notation, and even provides a migration path for users who want to update older diagrams with new elements and functionality introduced in the BPMN 2.0 standard.

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BPMN 1.0

The elements and rules for BPMN 1.0 diagrams are very similar to UML activity diagrams, providing a natural transition of the easy to use and highly acclaimed drawing tools of UModel® 2012 from UML to Business Process Modeling Notation. UModel® 2012 lets you create free-form diagrams that are useful for capturing the details of an internal process.

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You can also use pools and swimlanes in BPMN 1.0 diagrams to depict interactions between departments or enterprises.

Migrating to BPMN 2.0

An option in the right-click context menu lets you upgrade an existing BPMN 1 diagram to a BPMN 2 Business Process diagram.

Both BPMN 1.0 and BPMN 2.0 diagrams can co-exist in the same UModel project. If the BPMN 2 profile is required, UModel will notify you, then automatically include it.

The Diagram Tree organizes BPMN diagrams. When a BPMN 1.0 diagram is upgraded to BPMN 2.0, it is moved in the Diagram Tree and the Properties Window reports the new version.

BPMN 2.0

The BPMN 2.0 expands the application of the original business process modeling syntax to capture greater detail and describe a wider variety of business processes.

The BPMN 1.0 specification defined two model types to diagram internal business processes and cooperative, sometimes called public, processes. BPMN 2.0 adds new elements to the original BPMN diagrams, and adds new modeling concepts for business processes it defines as choreographies, collaborations, and conversations. BPMN 2.0 includes a total of 116 elements, compared to 48 elements in the original specification.

Altova UModel® 2012 includes robust support for the BPMN 2.0 specification, including all the new process types and elements. UModel also supports BPMN model exchange with other BPMN tools through the XMI specification first developed for UML models.

BPMN 2 Business Process Diagrams

BPMN 2.0 Business Process diagrams add new elements to let you refine diagrams that document a wide range of private (internal) and public business activities.

New elements in BPMN 2 include:

• New event types
• New task elements
• An additional gateway element
• Several new data elements and a datastore element to represent a database

UModel® 2012 keeps the BPMN 2 toolbar configuration manageable to maximize your diagram window. Elements are grouped so their variations all accessed via intuitive pull-down selection menus:

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BPMN 2 Choreography Diagrams

Choreography Diagrams specify the way business participants coordinate their interactions. They can also be seen as a business contract between participants, where the focus lies on the exchange of information (Messages) between the participants.

The UModel® 2012 Choreography diagrams toolbar adds BPMN 2.0 choreography elements that identify the participants and their activities, also called choreography tasks.

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Business contracts are often in the form of a purchase order sent to a supplier, the confirmation by the supplier to process the order, then the fulfilling of the order. Choreographies also have Activities ordered by Sequence Flows.

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BPMN 2 Collaboration Diagrams

Collaboration Diagrams specify the interactions between two or more processes, and the UModel® 2012 Collaboration diagrams toolbar adds BPMN2 collaboration elements.

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A BPMN collaboration generally consists of two or more pools which represent the participants in the collaboration. Message exchanges between participants are shown by Message Flows that connect the two pools, or the objects within the pools.

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Find out for yourself how intuitively you can create your own BPMN diagrams with UModel® 2012 Enterprise Edition – download a free trial today!