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 connectors. For each Decision gateway, at least one of the outgoing connectors must have an empty Condition (the Default connector), and the other connectors can each contain a condition. BPM Designer follows BPMN notation by automatically displaying the default connector as a line with a slash (/) through it.

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

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

Note: It is possible that the number of outgoing connectors for a Decision gateway can be more than the number of incoming connectors. This can occur when a Decision gateway has more than two outgoing connectors and two or more of these connectors 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 connector is activated and the number of outgoing connectors will always be 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, the Decision is blank.

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

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

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