Elements and flows

Add process elements to the working area to build a new business process.

Process elements are described in detail in separate chapters.

Contents

•Adding an element to a process

•Connecting process elements

•Changing the type of a process element

•Selecting multiple elements

Adding an element to a process

There are two ways of adding process elements in Creatio:

• Drag and drop an element from the process element toolbar on the left to the working area of the Process Designer (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Adding a process element from the element toolbar

 

• Drag and drop an element from another element on the diagram. This will add the corresponding new element, connected to the previously selected element with a sequence flow (Fig. 2). Click and select the element's type, if necessary.

Fig. 2 Adding a process element from another element

 

As you move the element on the diagram, alignment lines will appear (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Alignment lines

 

If a process element is placed on a flow that connects two other elements, this flow will be split into two flows to encompass the new element (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 Adding a process element to a sequence flow

 

Connecting process elements

Process elements in Creatio are connected with conditional flows, sequence flows and default flows. When you create a process element by dragging it from another element, it will be connected to the first element with a sequence flow automatically.

Also, you can drag-and-drop a sequence flow from a process element onto another process element (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5 Dragging an outgoing flow

 

The sequence flow is the default connection item. To connect two items with a default flow or a conditional flow, you need to change the type of the sequence flow to the desired type by clicking  in the element context menu.

Fig. 6 Changing flow type

 

Changing the type of a process element

There are 6 basic elements available from the element toolbar and element context menu.

Fig. 7 Adding elements and changing their types

• You can change an action ( system action or  user action) to any other type of action.

• You can change  start,  intermediate, or  end events to any other type of event.

• You can change a  gateway to any other type of gateway.

• You can convert a  sequence flow to  conditional flows or  default flows.

Selecting multiple elements

You can also select multiple elements on the diagram.

To select multiple elements, click on individual elements while holding down the Ctrl keyboard key (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8 Selecting elements on the process diagram

 

Each of the selected elements will be highlighted with a dotted frame around it. You can move or delete all highlighted elements (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9 Moving selected elements

 

Note

You can also drag-select multiple elements on the process diagram by pressing the Shift keyboard key, holding the left mouse button, and dragging a box around the required elements.

Moving element captions

You can move the captions of process elements using drag&drop (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10 Moving the captions of intermediate events

 

The position of the caption is always relative to the position of the parent element. If you move the parent element, the caption will move with it.

See also

•Sequence Flow

•Conditional flow

•Default Flow

•User actions

•System actions

•Events