Swimlanes and pools

Swimlanes and pools are used to organize process diagrams and their contents:

Swimlanes: Divide the process diagram into horizontal areas that you can use to organize the items on the process diagram. Swimlanes are used to improve the readability of process diagrams and have no effect on their execution.

Pools: The collection of swimlanes of a process diagram. The process editor in which process diagrams are displayed contain the entire pool.

You can use swimlanes to organize your process diagrams in any way that best suits your needs. For example, you may want to use swimlanes to organize the activities in the process by business unit. Each swimlane represents a different business unit, and the activities are placed in the swimlane according to the business unit that completes the operation.

The following illustration includes operations in the General swimlane if a user from any business unit can perform the operation. The Procurement Office swimlane includes an operation that invokes a subprocess that is performed by that business unit.

Swimlanes and pools

See also