Chapter 4 Building an Analysis Business Process Model
An organization unit is an optional element that allows you to define which organization is responsible for which process. It can represent a company, a system, a service, an organization, a user or a role. It can also be considered as a business partner who uses high level processes.
An organization unit is assigned to a process.
You can use internal and external shortcuts of organization units.
The organization unit is equivalent to the swimlane in UML. It allows you to have an organizational view of your processes and displays as follows:
A swimlane can contain all the symbols of a process diagram: processes, flows, decisions, etc.
A general option allows you to switch to the icon representation of the organization unit to express the relationship that exists between a process and the user of that process. You must use role associations between both objects to materialize that relationship.
If you want to switch to the icon representation, you have to select the Tools→Display Preferences→General command and deselect the Organization Unit Swimlane check box. You can also select the Disable Swimlane Mode from the Diagram or swimlane contextual menu.
Organization units as swimlane not allowed in top-level diagrams
For Business Process Models that support the concept of top-level diagrams, organization units represented as swimlanes are not allowed in top-level diagrams, only the icon representation is allowed.
For more information about top-level diagrams, see sections Understanding top-level diagram and top-level process in a collaborative BPM in chapter Building a Collaborative Business Process Model and Understanding top-level diagram and top-level process in an executable BPM in chapter Building an Executable BPM: Managing Data and Choreography.
An organization unit with an icon representation displays as follows and behaves like any other PowerDesigner objects:
In the following example, the organization unit (Buyer) uses the process (Order):
Using models from version 9
For models that have been created in version 9, organization units are represented with an icon. If you want to switch to the swimlane representation, you have to select the Tools→Display Preferences→General command and select the Organization Unit Swimlane check box.
When you switch from one representation to another, the following occurs in the diagram:
| From | What happens... |
|---|---|
| Swimlane to icon | The swimlane symbol is deleted, but the corresponding organization unit still exists in the Browser. To view the corresponding icon symbol, right-click the diagram background, select Show Symbols, and select the check box for the corresponding organization unit. If processes are attached to the swimlane, their attachment is still displayed in the property sheet of the processes. For more information about how to attach a process to an organization unit, see section Attaching a process to an organization unit |
| Icon to swimlane | The icon symbol for the organization unit is deleted and automatically replaced with a swimlane if the icon organization unit had a process attached to it, otherwise you must display the swimlane symbol using the Show Symbols feature |
| Copyright (C) 2007. Sybase Inc. All rights reserved. |
| |