Message Intermediate Event

General Questions/Discussions
1

Dear Sirs,

After reading two books, “BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide” and “The Microguide to Process Modeling in BPMN”, I finally know that the Message Intermediate Event is only used for sending a message to another participant (e.g. another pool) which I didn’t see such clear restriction in BPMN Spec. 1.2.

In our company’s circumstance, I need to use BP to describe:

  1. A and B department are in the same company, so they are in the same pool.
  2. A department needs to send a e-mail to B department after finishing X task, so that B will start to perform Y Task after being notified.

Since Message Intermediate Event cannot be used in the same pool…which element can I use to describe this situation?

Warm Regards,
Janice Wang

2

Hi Janice Wang,

Thanks for your post. BPMN’s modeling focus on

  1. messages between participants (normally between self to other)
  2. internal flow

If you want to model the flows between departments, you can simply create them in different participant.
e.g. userX talks to userY (they are working in same company
If you choose the the whole company as self, in the view of company, it does not care what the staffs are talking about.
If you choose the staff as self, in the view of staff, the message of other staff is very important.

In conclude, you can model the departments A and B as separate pool, then A can send an email to B - presents by Message Intermediate Event through Message Flow. Hope this answers your question.

BTW, you can specify the pool (e.g. company name) in the header block of the BPD (as shown as attached image).

Best regards,
Lilian Wong

specify_pool_in_header_block.png993×451 48.5 KB

specify_pool_in_header_block.png