Converging and diverging process flows with gateways
About this task
In a service flow diagram, you can use only exclusive gateways.
In a process diagram, you can model any of the following types of gateways:
Component icon | Gateway type | Description |
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Parallel (AND) |
Use a parallel, diverging gateway when you want the process to follow all available paths. Use a parallel, converging gateway when you want to converge all available paths. |
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Inclusive (OR) | Use inclusive, diverging gateway when you want to follow one or more available paths based on conditions that you specify. Use downstream of an inclusive diverging gateway to converge multiple paths into a single path after all the active paths completed their runtime execution. The inclusive join looks upstream at each path to determine whether the path is active, in which case it waits. Otherwise, it passes the token through without waiting. |
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Exclusive (XOR) | Use to model a point in the process or service flow execution where only
one of several paths can be followed, depending on a condition, or to model a point in process
execution when the token for one of several incoming paths is passed through the gateway. Note: The
exclusive gateways are the only gateways that can be implemented in human services. For more
information, see Implementing exclusive gateways.
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Event | Use to model a point in the process execution where only one of several paths can be followed, depending on events that occur. A specific event, such as the receipt of a message or timer event, determines the path to be taken. An event gateway must be modeled a certain way as described in Modeling event gateways. |
When you model inclusive and exclusive gateways, if all conditions evaluate to false, the process follows the default sequence flow. The default sequence flow is the first sequence flow that you create from the gateway to a following activity, but you can change the default sequence flow at any time, as described in the following procedure.
To add gateways to a process or human service diagram: