Features described on this page

BPMN Element Restriction SERVER | DATA CENTER

^{|Since 3.26.0-ENTERPRISE.|}

Organizations, departements or teams may agree on a modeling etiquette in order to prevent common error sources, reduce complexity for modelers and readers alike and increase readibility. By controlling which BPMN elements are available in the BPMN Model Editor, these can be enforced and a consistent modeling flow is assured.

Default Configuration

By default, all elements which conform to the BPMN 2.0 Standard are available as can be seen exemplary for Flow elements.

Open

At this point, users could choose Flow elements over Gateways and make use of the Conditional Flow element. There are a few possible downsides to Conditional Flow elements:

• We can not model cascading conditions.

• Experience has shown that Conditional Flows get mistaken for being exclusive while in reality they are equivalent to an OR-Split.

• Without Gateways, we can not model synchronization (AND-Joins).

Let us assume that for these reasons, a team chooses to not use Conditional Flows from now on. If new members join the team or members work in multiple teams with different modeling etiquettes we can expect quite a few hick-ups. This is where the configuration of the available BPMN elements comes into play.

Settings

Navigate to either the Settings for Confluence Admins (as described here) or to the Settings for Space Admins, e.g. by using the sidebar while being in the space in question and following Apps → BPMN Modeler Enterprise.

Open

We may now use the toggles to either configure specific BPMN elements or even turn off/on whole thematic groups of elements. We choose to only turn off the Conditional Flow element. Do not forget to "Submit" your changes per group when you are done configuring your spaces preferences.

The Confluence-wide Settings controlled by Confluence Admins act as a default for Confluence Space configurations: If no Settings were submitted for certain BPMN elements in a Space, the Confluence-wide Settings are being used. Otherwise the Space Settings overwrite the Confluence-wide Settings. By clicking “Reset to default” in the Space Settings, the Confluence-wide configurations are loaded once again.

Modeling Etiquette in action

Let's go back to our model. If we now have a Default Flow and try to change it to a Conditional Flow, we see that this BPMN element option is not available anymore.

Our team thus chooses to represent the business process by using an XOR-Gate. Mission accomplished!