BPMN 2.0 Artifacts

Artifacts

• Show additional information about a Process that is not directly related to the Sequence Flows or Message Flows of the Process.

BPMN provides three standard Artifacts:

• • Associations
  • Groups
  • Text Annotations

• Additional Artifacts MAY be added to the BPMN specification in later versions
• A modeler or modeling tool MAY extend a BPMN diagram and add new types of Artifacts to a Diagram

Association

• Associates information and Artifacts with Flow Objects
• Also used to show the Activity used for compensation
• Association is different than Data Association

Group

• Provides a visual mechanism to group elements of a diagram informally
• The grouping is tied to the CategoryValue supporting element
• Groups are often used to highlight certain sections of a Diagram without adding additional constraints for performance-as a Sub-Process would.
• The highlighted (grouped) section of the Diagram can be separated for reporting and analysis purposes

Groups do not affect the flow of the Process.

Text Annotation

• Is a mechanism for a modeler to provide additional information for the reader of a BPMN Diagram
• The Text Annotation object can be connected to a specific object on the Diagram with an Association
• Does not affect the flow of the Process