0

How can I model a supporting recurring activity for a process? A more general example is how to model waiting for customer actions while performing follow-up actions.

We have a process where we send a message to the customer and once they respond, we go to the next activity or stop there depending on the answer. We want to describe that, after sending the message, everyday there is a process to check for how long we're waiting and take corrective actions like send e-mail after one week, or notify the sales person after 2 weeks, etc.

Thank you,

EDIT Here is an example of how I would model it. Note that the granularity may not be the same for the main process (one quote), and the recurring activity (client by client). Today, some supporting activities are not even in the same model, so

supporting activity

It may be possible to write everything at customer level, but it involes multi-instance activities which are harder to explain to business users.

Kru
  • 137
  • 3
  • [Sharing your research helps everyone](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important). Tell us what you've tried and why it didn't meet your needs. This demonstrates that you've taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer. Also see [ask] – gnat Feb 05 '21 at 12:45
  • Does this answer your question? [Representing a "wait until" in an activity diagram in UML](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/351604/representing-a-wait-until-in-an-activity-diagram-in-uml) - I know, it is not BPMN, but I guess the differences might not be really important. – Doc Brown Feb 05 '21 at 12:48

1 Answers1

1

You would typically use timing events in BPMN, be it interrupting or non-interrupting events.

These events could:

  • either trigger recurring activities that are not related to any concrete process occurence (e.g. unrelated flows “get some news from customer if no order for fore than 2 month”);

  • or react to abnormal timing situations to launch follow-up related to a process occurence that is stuck (e.g. “propose contract, but if no answer after 1 week send a reminder”)

Unfortunately it is not possible to provide more precise guidance without more concrete details. Here some more examples including time dependencies between tasks.

Christophe
  • 74,672
  • 10
  • 115
  • 187