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I have a process that splits into many different branches. The business requirement is that at any step, the process has to sent back to the process originator for correction and re-approval.

I know it would be possible to to use gateway logic at the end of each step and have the process return to the beginning that way; however, this would add many lines and branches to the process so that it would be incredibly difficult to read. I was thinking that an alternate way to accomplish this would be to simply abort the process and restart based on the information in the existing process - this seems more maintainable.

Both of these would not be too hard to implement, but I am wondering if there is an easier way to achieve this goal. I have not worked with signals much, but is there a way to leverage that to return to a previous step in the process?

Start of Editted Solution

Based on @Kris Verlaenen suggestion, it created the example process below.

Example of Embedded Process and Signals

I started by putting all of the steps that can be might be skipped into an Embedded SubProcess. The Return, Rejection, and Cancel signals were added from the Boundary Events tab of the palette. While the process waits for the Supervisor or Manager approval to complete, you can send a either of the signals to either go back to the first step or jump to the end of the process.

Ed.
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Mike
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1 Answers1

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Using a event sub-process could allow you to trigger some part of your process every time the event occurs (could be signal, error, etc.)

Using an embedded sub-process with boundary event might help, as that way you would only have to link back grom that boundary event to the start, and whenever a signal / error occurs inside the sub-process, the boundary event could catch this. You could even make it interrupting, meaning it would cancel anything inside the sub-process as well, basically resetting what you were doing.

Kris Verlaenen
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    Kris, could you show an example of such event sub-process? – Oleg Mar 27 '15 at 10:27
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    Also could you tell if there is a programmtic way to trigger an arbitrary node within the process? Thanks – Oleg Mar 27 '15 at 10:40
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    Kris, I would like to see an example of this if possible since I may be misinterpreting your answer. If I wrap the majority of my process inside an embedded subprocess, it could use boundary events to return to the leave the subprocess and return any step or gateway? – Mike Mar 27 '15 at 12:53
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    @Mike, were you able to find a better solution? I'm also pondering how to do this. If you can give some advice, that would be very helpful! – LifeAndHope Apr 29 '15 at 14:46