This is a short overview of Intalio|BPMS Designer, and of its new BPMN Modeler. This will take you through the basics of the new BPMN Modeler and give you a step by step guide on build a simple process.

Installation

Download the latest version of Intalio|BPMS Designer 5.0.

Please read the release notes for up to date information, know bugs, newest additions.

 

Start Intalio|BPMS Designer 5.0

On Windows, you start "designer.exe" in the installed directory, on Mac or Linux, you start "eclipse" in the unzipped directory.

A dialog will pop up asking you to select a workspace location. You can use the default or create a new location. The workspace is used to store all your projects.

Once Intalio|BPMS 5.0 is loaded, you will see the following workspace.

Creating a new Business Process Project

Right click in the Process Explorer Pane and select "New>Business Process Project". Name it "MyFirstProject" and use the Default Location.

Note: The project name may only contains letters, '-', '_' or Digits. Designer shows error for project name with any other special characters.

Right click on the newly created node ("My First Project"), and select "New>Business Process Diagram". Name it "MyFirstBPMNProject" and click on "Finish".

 

Note: The file name for a diagram must be letters, digits, '.', '-', '_'. Any special character will be invalid.

Your workspace now looks a lot more interesting:

 

Error: The first task of an executable pool must receice a message.

Note:This warning message occurs for all the executable pools, pool task is waiting for the request message from the non-executable pool or other pool. The error can be goes off in two way, by either making pool as non-executable or sending request from task in the non-executable pool to the task of executable pool.

 

Now you need to make this pool as non-executable. Select the pool, right click on it and select "Set pool non executable".

 

Workspace Overview

 

Let's quickly go over the main areas that we will use (you can safely ignore the other panes for now).

 

Process Explorer

 

This is where you manage all the project's artifacts (Diagrams, WSDLs, Schemas, Forms, etc).

 

Palette

 

This is the list of all the shapes to build BPMN processes

 

Outline

 

This is a reduced version of the full Diagram to help you navigate bigger Diagrams.

 

Properties

 

Context sensitive properties of the selected shape

 

Modeling Pane

 

And finally, the modeling pane, where you build the processes. This tutorial will focus mainly on this area.

 

Modeling a BPMN Process

Here's what we will be modeling, a simple (simplistic?) order process. The idea here is not to get the most realistic Order Process, but demonstrate and understand some basic tools to design the process models you have.

 

While connecting gateway to an activity you will get this error.

Error:A case must define a condition.

Note:The error referrers to provide a condition for gateway.

 

Renaming the Pool

Double click on the "Pool" String (left of the Pool shape), you enter than edit mode. Type in "Merchant" and either press Enter or click somewhere else to make your change effective.

 

Renaming a shape

To rename the existing task, you can follow the same method as above, or use the Properties Pane. To do this, select the Task, bring up the Properties Pane if it is not visible, and in the Process Execution tab, change the value of the Label Property (Use Enter or click somewhere else to make your change effective)

 

Adding shapes from the Palette

Bring up the Palette if it is not visible already. Then click on the "Empty Start" shape to select it

Now, bring your cursor to the left of the 'Task' in the "Pool" and click. This will create a new Empty Start shape.

 

Adding multiple shapes from the Palette

You can use the same palette to add multiple shapes without having to go back to the palette. To do this, double click onto the shape you want (notice that on the second click, you get a black frame around the shape. In this case lets add a few Tasks. Now you can click multiple times onto the Pool and create a Task each time. When done, either hit the "Escape" Key, or click on the Select tool in the Palette.

 

Here where we are so far (don't worry about aligning the shapes just yet).

 

Adding shapes using the Diagram Assistant

There is yet an other way to add shapes. When you stop your mouse over the diagram, you'll notice something can pop up: the Modeling Assistant.

 

This popup is context sensitive and will only show the shape that can be added where the mouse is. For example, outside a Pool the Modeling Assistant will show:

 

Aligning the Shapes using the alignment guides

 

With the Selection Tool Selected, you can click on a shape and drag it where you want it.

 

Connecting shapes

Now is a good time to connect the shapes. When you hover your mouse next to the left side or right side of a shape (a Task for example), you'll see a small connector pop out.

 

Click on it and without releasing the mouse, move your mouse onto the shape you want to establish a connection with, and release the mouse.

Repeat till you have

 

Now, we've seen how you could add shapes, how you could connect shapes, and this is all very nice already. But what if you could combine both operations? Well, you can. The next section will show you how.

 

Adding shapes when adding connectors

Using the small connector pop out, instead of releasing your mouse onto an existing shape, release it onto an empty space in your pool.

 

The menu is contains the same list of shapes the Modeling Assistant would contain.

Add a Data Based Exclusive Gateway

Completing your first BPMN Process

Now, we've covered enough of the basics so that you can add the missing shapes, and complete you first BPMN Process!

 

 

A few more Modeling goodies

Here's a short list of worthy new features you may want to experiment with:

 

Changing the type of an activity

In our previous version, changing the type of an activity meant that you needed to delete it, recreate it and then relink anything that was removed when deleting, resetting properties, etc... This is no longer necesary! Just right click on any shape, and select "Change activity type to > ..." and select the desired type.

 

 

Adding an URL or a document to a Task

In previous versions, a very popular feature request was to add the ability to attach a link to a web page, or even to attach a document explaining in more details what the Task was about. In Intalio|BPMS Designer 5.0, you can do both!

 

To set an URL on a Task, select it, and enter theURL in the "Documentation" Property on "Process Execution" tab. Later, you can right click on that property and chose "Open in Browser" to show that page directly in Intalio|BPMS Designer.

 

To attach a document to a task, first, add that document to the workspace. Here you can just create a text file, but you could as well attach a Word Document, a PDF, ... To create a text file, in the Process Explorer, right click on your project, or any directory within that project, chose "New>Other...". Select "File" from the "General" Category. Click on Next, set a name ("doc.txt"), and then hit "Finish". You can now enter some text and save it.

Now, simply drag that document onto a Task in your Diagram.

 

 

To view the document, you can use Shift-double-click on that task, or use the right-click > Open linked file with > ...

 

Oh, One More Thing!

 

1- Make a diagram, select shapes or all of them.
2- Copy the selection (Ctrl-C)
3- Open Word/Powerpoint...
4- Paste...

 

The selection is now an image embedded in the office document.

 

Where to go from here

Look for more tutorials over the coming weeks, covering more and more features as version 5.0 matures.

 

Questions? Problems? Feedback? Join us in our 5.0 forum .