Sub Processes

An entire process diagram is wrapped up in a sub process element.

In some processes, there are tasks that require more details than others or entail multiple different activities. It may simply be that several small sub steps have not been considered or have been combined into an entire activity.

With a collapsed sub process, you can outsource these sub steps into a new diagram to keep the main process clean and focused on its main facts. Sub processes have a plus sign at the middle bottom side, which indicates that there is potentially another process model linked to it.

The fastest way to create a sub process directly from the main process is to use the transform button after selecting the desired elements. It automatically creates a new file for your sub process in the Explorer.

To learn how to transform process steps into a sub process, watch this video.

Linking a diagram to a sub process element is straightforward. You can either choose the option to create a new process diagram or use an existing file that is stored in your folder structure.

The system initially doesn't distinguish whether a model represents a main process or a sub process. For example, you could add an extension like "sub process" to the file name to make it recognizable as such.

To learn how to link sub processes to your diagram tasks, watch the following video.

Once a sub process is created, it can also be reused in other process models. In fact, it allows creating core parts of your business process landscape and it can be used as often as it's needed without modeling it twice. This keeps your processes cleaned up and accomplishes a single source of truth. Let's have a look on an example.

This main process contains two sub processes, each describing their part steps in a dedicated model, which is required to perform a product sourcing and a financial handling. Here, the sub processes are represented as a call activity, as they refer to global processes.

In this example, we see that the models of both sub processes were also reused in two other main processes, "Stock management" and "Repair". Reminder: As those processes also reference the global processes, a call activity (bold black frame) was used to reflect it.

Facilitates:

• Reusability of models saves time and reduces effort.
• Harmonizing your processes across the process landscape
• Individual levels of details - concentrated main process and specialized sub processes

At first glance, the expanded sub process looks like a grouping of activities in a process model. Sometimes there are tasks that pursue the same intermediate goal or at least contribute to it. To illustrate this in your process model, without losing the eye of sight or correlation to the main process goal, this modeling method is useful. Expanded sub processes only exist in a particular process scenario and can't be reused in other models.