Animacian and Inclusive Gateways

Dear,

The new ‘Animacian’ feature within BPVA is really interesting, and a nice way of presenting process flows to groups of people.

While evaluating the different possibilities, I modelled an inclusive gateway, with 3 outgoing flows, of which always two should be followed (see image)

I would expect that based on this, Animacian identifies two possible paths… One path following the “>5000€” flow AND the default one, another path following the “<5000€” flow AND the default one. But Animacian gives three possible paths… Is this a bug, or is this how it is intended to be?

Thanks a lot!

Maarten
InclusiveGateway.bmp

Hi Maarten,

Thanks for your post and details. I’ve forwarded the details to our engineers to follow-up. If there is any feedback, I’ll let you know.

Best regards,
Lilian Wong

Hi Maarten,

Sorry for my late response. We fixed the animacian problem for Inclusive Gateway, please run “BPVA Update” inside BPVA/bin folder to update to latest patch (sp1_20090805e or later) for the fix. You can refer to the following link for details about updating your product to latest patch:

BTW, updating to latest patch is supported in BP-VA 3.0 SP1. If you are running BP-VA 3.0 but not 3.0 SP1, please run “BPVA Update” to update to BP-VA 3.0 SP1 first, then update to latest patch.

Best regards,
Lilian Wong

Lilian,

This is not a correct behavior according to BPMN Spec 1.2 (9.5.3.2 Sequence Flow Connections) (BPMN 2.0 is not out yet). The representation on the original image concerns a default gate, not a “always use” gate, and a default gate is synonymous of “otherwise”. The spec says:
“If none of the ConditionExpressions for the Gates are evaluated as “TRUE,” then the DefaultGate
SHALL be chosen.”.

An “always use” gate would be a straight sequence flow. Animacian was right before, it is not now: it must show 3 different paths. And considering the original image the “default path” would be chosen only with an order of… exactly 5000 because the other paths are “>” and "<"­.

Regards,

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your post. Our engineers is follow-up this issue and the bug fix will be available in BP-VA 3.2 (planned to be released in January 2010). I’ll let you know if there is any further news on this issue.

Best regards,
Lilian Wong

Hi Patrick,

I would like to let you know that we fixed this problem in BP-VA 3.1 (you don’t need to wait for BP-VA 3.2), please update to latest patch (20091028e or later) for the fix. More details about latest patch can be found from:

Please let me know if there is anything we can help.

Best regards,
Lilian Wong

Hi Lilian!

Great work! The fix gives correct paths! Thanks!

Of course, in this example, an actual process wouldn’t raise the 2 “monetary” paths at the same time because they are based on the same condition but the notions of Inclusive Gateway and “default” path (which means “otherwise”) are correctly handled now.

Regards,

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

You are welcome.

Best regards,
Lilian Wong