Business Studio Developer Center
Structuring Processes
With the improvement in modeling tools, the challenge of modeling processes is no longer being able to model the complexity of your process, it's knowing how to structure your process to mitigate and compartmentalize that complexity. TIBCO hosted a series of 3 webinars covering this subject with Sandy Kemsley, an independent business process analyst with extensive experience modeling and deploying business processes. Learn tips and techniques for discovering, modeling and designing your process by clicking on the links to the webinars with Sandy here:
http://www.tibco.com/solutions/bpm/understanding_bpm.jsp
Adding a Lane
To add a lane, click on the lane activity in the activity palette. Move the mouse over to the left hand side of the pool where the lane labels are. You will notice, as you drag the mouse across your screen that there is a black circle with a slash through it, indicating that you may not add a lane at that location. This will change to a small box when you are over an area where you can add a lane. To add a second lane to the pool, move your mouse to the top right hand of the screen, and place the mouse between the pool label, and the lane label—the object by the mouse will change from the circle to the box. Click on the mouse, and a lane will be added. To add successive lanes, you may add them in the same way, or if you wish to add them in other locations in the pool, click between the two lane labels where you would like the new lane. To delete a lane, right click the lane, and select delete.
Lane Properties
Lanes may be open or closed. Closed lanes are used for parts of a process that are unknown, and out of control of the process owner, for example, when a step of a process moves outside of a company. You may change a lane from close to open, by right-clicking and selecting your desired lane state.
Creating an Archive from a Business Studio Project
You may wish to share your process models with a colleague in an informal way that does not rely on source control; or you may wish to back something up when you are away from the corporate network and cannot get onto your source control server. Creating an archive of your project may help! Right-click a project name, select Export. One of the options is "Archive file," select it and click "Next," There are options about what sort of archive to create and so forth, but the only essential step is to browse for the location of your desired archive. Note that you may also archive files from more than one project. All that remains is to click "Finish."
Importing an Archived Project
Perhaps you are familiar with creating new projects or creating them from source control, but it is also possible to create a project from an archive that may have been sent to you by a colleague. This is a handy way to exchange tips on how to do something. Select the File > Import menu. Select "Existing Projects into Workspace" and click "Next." Select the radio button labelled "Select archive file" and Browse for the Archive file. The Project(s) within the archive will be displayed in the list. This list is built from the .project files in the archive. Select those you wish to import and click "Finish."
