Swim Lane

Press the Swimlanes button in the Layout group on the Layout tab. The drop down menu opens with at least two items: Roles Swimlanes and Value Added Swimlanes.

If you have defined your own custom types there will be there extra buttons for swimlanes based on those types (not available in Engage Process Modeler Starter edition)

In this layout, the activities that are executed by the same role (have the same value added or have the same custom type value) are drawn in the same lane. If there is more than one role assigned to a process step then it is drawn in all relevant lanes (e.g., Decide meeting in the diagram above).

The lanes are drawn only for those roles (values added values, custom type values) that are used in the process.

The steps that do not have the Roles (Value added, custom type) value assigned yet are drawn in the additional lane called Undefined (see, e.g., Preparation task).

The steps that do not have the Roles (Value added, custom type) property at all are drawn in the lanes appropriate for their predecessors or successors,.except the Start step that is always drawn in the first lane.

In the Roles Swimlanes, all automatic tasks, even though they cannot have roles assigned by definition, are drawn in a separate lane called Automatic (see the Backup task in the diagram above).

If the Start step has the property used to create swim lanes then it must be drawn in the lane corresponding to the value of this property. Initially, this lane is put on top to follow the rule that Start is always in the first lane.You can later reorder the lanes.

As you can see above, the Break and Subprocess steps are drawn in the lanes appropriate for their successors. The same applies for Choice, Parallel, and Process Link. Only Milestone steps are drawn in the lanes appropriate for their predecessors.

You can continue modeling in the swim lane view. However, the behaviour of insert and drag and drop is different now.

The swim lanes can be combined with the Full Screen mode.

The initial order of the lanes in the swim lane view is determined automatically. The user can change this order by dragging and dropping role names in the first column of the view.

Move cursor on top of the lane name to see the description of the corresponding role/item.

Press Value stream button to return to the standard process view.