Creating a Collaboration

Create a collaboration and insert other participants.

Context

A collaboration shows the message exchange between two or more participants. Participants are modeled by pools. Each pool can contain one process.

Message flows can be directly modeled between pools or start or end with flow nodes which are in a pool's process.

The following elements can be assigned to a collaboration's participant:

A process
A multiplicity in the form of lower bounds and upper bounds; this can be used if the participant represents multiple instances, e.g. more than one supplier.
A partner entity represented in the standard configuration by an organizational unit. a component or resource
A partner role represented in the standard configuration by a role or an actor
Supported interfaces; these are service interfaces which are supported by the participant
Internal participant analogy and external participant analogy:
If e.g. a call activity in a participant's process calls another process which is defined in a collaboration, it may be necessary to assign the participants of the collaborations affected to each other. An internal participant analogy is the assignment of a participant to a participant of the called process. An external participant analogy is the assignment of a participant to a participant of the calling process.

How to proceed

Drag the Collaboration element from the Create Diagram Contents group in the gallery and drop it in a BPMN diagram.

A new collaboration with two participants is created and shown in the diagram.
To add further participants, drag the Participant element from the gallery and drop it on a free point in the collaboration but make sure it is outside of the participants already there.

A new participant is created and inserted. The existing participants are moved if necessary so that they are not overlapping.
Set the properties you want for the participants in the Properties window.

A multiplicity greater than 1 is shown by an icon of three vertical lines in the pool.

A partner entity can also be assigned using drag-and-drop.

Note

Pools can be arranged in any way in the collaboration. The size can be changed both horizontally and vertically. Unlike with lanes, pools do not have to take up the entire width or height of the collaboration.

Tip

You can create a new collaboration by dragging an existing use case and dropping it in a BPMN diagram. A participant is automatically created and assigned accordingly in the collaboration for each participating actor and system (components) containing the use case.