Reuse Lanes

Reuse of Lanes in a diagram is a modeling enhancement of Process Modeler and does not reflect a BPMN concept, although this function leaves your BPMN-XML absolutely correct. The reason is that Lanes in BPMN cannot be (visually) replicated as it is possible with Pools.

How to get value from reusage

In a business process, a Lane (i.e. a role) usually covers activities in more than one process section. This means for hierarchical diagrams (using sub-processes) you need to insert the same role in different sub-processes. The cost of process modeling becomes an issue when you want to document Lanes with more details (e.g. a role profile in the documentation attribute).

Process Modeler now supports in keeping documentation redundance low with the reusage concept.

This is how you do it:

1. Insert your Lanes whererever needed
2. Decide which in a series of duplicate Lanes you would like to document: this will be your Master Lane
3. Now reuse this Lane by applying the context menu “Reuse…” on all the other Lanes reflecting the same role
4. In the Process Modeler Word Export (e.g. in the Lane Pattern) you will only see one Lane documented.