In a camunda training slide I found an example of a multiple instance marker to a pool. An activity in pool A sends out a message to pool B wich has the MI marker. This means the activity sends out the message to multiple responding processes (i.e. asking multiple suppliers for a quote).
Obviously some vendors of modelers do not interprete the bpmn standard this way and argue, that MI markers are only applicable to activities and subprocesses, but not to pools, so they don’t offer a feature to do so.
So one of them seems to be wrong: camunda training slides or the vendor who told me the other story? What does the bpmn standard tell us about MI markers to pools? I guess Falko will know for sure…
I’m pretty sure multi-instance markers on a pool are not part of the standard or part of Camunda. Considering a Pool represents a process - what would be the need to specify multi-instance markers? If you want to run a pool multiple starts all your need to do is call the process more than once.
Do you happen to have the slide in question? Can you post it here?
BPMN Spec section 9.2 (Collaboration → Pool and Participant) says:
BPMN specifies a marker for Pools: a multi-instance marker May be displayed for a Pool (see Figure 9.6). The marker is used if the Participant defined for the Pool is a multi-instance Participant. See page 117 for more information on Participant multiplicity.
OK - MI Markers to Pools are compliant with BPMN specs as “multi instance participant”. But how does camunda modeler handle the attribute? I can’t find an option to check a pool as mi participant.
This is a very old post with an issue that I hope will be addressed (as well as a few others) in the latest version. Plan on attending le Dec. 5 webinar and asking.