Defining properties of Decision gateways

The Decision gateway (

) represents a division of the control flow of the process. A Decision gateway can contain multiple incoming and outgoing links. For each Decision gateway, at least one of the outgoing links must have an empty Condition (the Default link), and the other links can each contain a condition. Business Process Modeler follows BPMN notation by automatically displaying the default link as a line with a slash (/) through it.

Alternatively, you can get the equivalent of a Decision gateway by adding multiple outgoing links to a successor Activity workstep, and assigning a specified condition to some of the links. With this type of link, any links with conditions are indicated by a small diamond

at the start of the link, and the default link as a line with a slash (/) through it. Once the predecessor workstep is completed, one or more successor worksteps are activated if conditions in the links are fulfilled.

Note: It is possible that the number of outgoing links for a Decision gateway can be more than the number of incoming links. This can occur when a Decision gateway has more than two outgoing links and two or more of these links fall within the probability range and are activated, resulting in an apparent discrepancy in simulation data. For an Exclusive Decision (see DefiningExclusive Decisions), however, only one outgoing link is activated and the number of outgoing links is always equal to the number of incoming instances.

Click the Decision gateway to view its properties in the Properties view. The Properties view of a Decision gateway includes two tabs—General and Description.

1. From the General tab, modify (if required) the name of the Decision gateway in the Name box. Enter the label for the gateway in the Label box. Once you assign a label to a Decision, it always appears in the process template diagram. If no label is entered, then the Decision is blank.

2. To make the Decision gateway an exclusive decision gateway, select the Exclusive checkbox (available for Process Models only). For details, see DefiningExclusive Decisions.

3. The Links section contains a table that lists all the multiple outgoing links (and conditions, if any) from this gateway. You can modify or remove any link by selecting it and then clicking Modify or Remove. For information on defining link properties, see Defining link properties.

Note: You can enter a description (optional) for the Decision gateway in the Description tab. A description can be up to 4095 characters.