Celonis Process Management BPMN reference

The following sections describe the basic BPMN elements that are necessary to know in order to work with Celonis Process Management.

BPMN basics

Type	Description
Swimlane	Demonstrate organizational and technical responsibilities.
Task	An atomic activity that defines a unit of work within a process. It has exactly one incoming and one outgoing sequence flow.
Connection	Define the order in which tasks are performed.
Gateway	Split or join the control flow. Best practice is to keep this differentiation hard so that a gateway either has exactly one incoming and several outgoing sequence flows or vice versa.

Task types

Icon

Name

Description

Message task

Send or receive a message to or from a participant (eventually another BPMN pool).

User task

Executed by a person with the assistance of a process-aware application. Typically performed via an application user interface.

Manual task

Executed by a person without the aid of a process-aware application, often without user interface. Example: telephone call.

Business rule task

Used to determine or calculate an output based on some input data. Examples: setting a priority, calculating cost. Often used before a gateway to decide on the right path.

Service Task

No human interaction. Automatically executed by some sort of an external service such as a web service.

Script Task

No human interaction. Executed by a process execution engine. Example: assigning a new helpdesk ticket to an operator.

Task markers

Loop

Repeats a task until condition is true (like “WHILE).

Sequential multi instance

Sequentially executes a task for all items (like “FOR EACH”).

Parallel multi instance

Instances are executed in parallel (like “FOR EACH”).

Connections


	Sequence flow	Defines the order in which tasks are performed
	Message flow	Indicates the flow of messages between pools
	Association	Links information (carriers) with other elements

Event types


	Start event	Initiates the process. A process can have multiple start events. A start event has no incoming and exactly one outgoing sequence flow.
	Intermediate event	Indicates an event (that eventually needs to be waited for) within a process. It has exactly one incoming and one outgoing sequence flow.
	End event	Regularly ends or terminates the process. It has exactly one incoming and no outgoing sequence flow. A process can have multiple end events.