Swimlanes

You can divide the work that is required to complete a task among different roles or workgroups by creating swimlanes.

A swimlane is a partition in the Step Designer canvas that organizes the role or workgroup responsible for a step. You can drag and drop steps only to a role or workgroup swimlane in the canvas. After a step is first assigned to a swimlane, you can move it to another swimlane only by updating the Swimlane step property.

You can add two types of swimlanes to the canvas: role lanes and workgroup lanes. You can assign any role that is defined in the solution to a role lane. Any steps added to a role lane are assigned to case workers in that role. You can add workgroups in Manage Workgroups. Any steps that are added to a workgroup lane will be in the personal in-basket for users that are assigned to that workgroup.

The following table describes the differences between a role and a workgroup.

Table 1. Differences between roles and workgroups
Roles	Workgroups
Roles are created at the solution level and can be reused for more than one task or case type.	Workgroups can be created at the task level. You can also select predetermined workgroups that you create in Case Builder or in IBM® FileNet® Process Designer.
Each role is assigned an in-basket at the solution level.	Workgroups do not have in-baskets. Work assigned to workgroup members is located in the personal in-basket for the member.
The Content Platform Engine creates a work queue for each role in the solution.	Workgroups are not assigned to a queue. Each member of the workgroup receives the work item. When a work item (step) is assigned to a workgroup to complete, all members of the work group must process and complete the item.