Hi Team,
I am trying to convert a business flow which is already modelled in Metastorm Platform, to Camunda 7. I am a bit confused with certain components in Metastorm and what are the BPMN alternates for them in Camunda 7. Can you kindly suggest Camunda 7 alternates for the following Metastorm components:
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Common Stage: Common stages are used in cases where the same sequence of steps occurs at several points in the business process. We can link a common stage to multiple stages and avoid duplication of these steps in the linked stages.
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Flag action: It is invoked when the engine is informed that a particular task has occurred. These are used to send messages between processes/ external applications
I am new to BPMN, could you please help
Thanks in advance.
Hi @Pushkala,
- A common stage seems like a reusable process (part of a process). BPMN has call activities. A call activity links to another process model. When an instance reaches a call activity, the linked process is invoked. The instance only continues once the called process completes. You can read more about call activitites here.
- In BPMN, interactions between processes and external applications is usually modeled explicitly - you can use a send task or a service task.
Alternatively, Camunda 7 enables you to attach TaskListeners and ExecutionListeners to your process application.
If you are new to BPMN, the on-demand BPMN course in the Camunda Academy may be for you.
Hi @StephanHaarmann
Thank you very much for the response.
I have a small confusion that can Call activity can be used to link activities within a single process model?
It is defined as ’ call activity references a process that is external to the process definition, and the main use case for the call activity is to have a reusable process definition that can be called from multiple other process definitions’
My use case is to group some commonly occurring steps in different tasks to a single stage and then link this stage to related user tasks. This is happening inside a single process definition. So can I use Call activity here?
Thanks in advance
In BPMN a task is atomic — you cannot divide it further into steps.
Let me illustrate call activities with an example.
A company offers products and services. The company has to order-to-pay processes respectively. However, both invoke the same invoice process. They can do this via a call activity that links the invoice process.
Based on your response, I’ve the feeling that I did not understand common stages fully. Let me summarize what I understood:
You have multiple user tasks in a sequence.
You can mark these tasks as a common stage.
At other places you can add a task, link it to the common stage, and henceforth it acts as a placeholder for the sequence of user tasks defined before.
Is that right? Then I think call activities may still be your best option; however, you cannot link the call activity to a sequence of tasks in the same process. These tasks need to be externalized into a separate process.
Thanks again @StephanHaarmann.
But as you mentioned in the last section, we cannot link the call activity to a sequence of tasks in the same process. These tasks need to be externalized into a separate process. I think here is where I am stuck and I am trying to find a bpmn alternate for the same.
I believe there is no 1-to-1 mapping of common stages to BPMN.
Hi @Pushkala,
it may be a workround to use pools and model the stage in same diagram:
The process engine will create new process instances for each stage.
Hope this helps, Ingo
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@Ingo_Richtsmeier Thank you for your time. I will take a look into this