Process designer

The process designer is where you build a business process: you set the process properties, decide who may start it, and draw its stages, gateways and ends on a canvas. Everything you configure is saved to the process’s draft version; nothing reaches running instances until you publish and activate a version.

Before you begin

• You need the Process Designer security role. See Installation.
• Create the business process record first: Logic FabricProcessesBusiness ProcessesNew. Give it a Name, a Title, a Process Entity (the table it runs on) and the Logic Fabric project it belongs to.

Caution

You cannot change the name, the Process Entity or the project after you create the process. The name must be unique within its project.

Open the designer

1. Open the business process record (or select it in the grid).
2. Select Process Designer on the command bar. The designer opens on the process’s draft version. If there is no draft, one is created from the active version.
3. Use the tabs at the top: Properties, Precondition and Process.

Tab	What you set
Properties	The Process Entity and the columns the process can read, the Title (localized; it becomes the instance Subject), the Process Instance Owner and the Due Date of the instance. All are required to publish.
Precondition	Who can start the process and on which records. See Starting processes.
Process	The canvas.

The Properties and Precondition tabs show a badge when they contain problems.

The canvas toolbar

Control	What it does
Add	One menu for every shape, grouped as Stages (Stage), Gateways (Exclusive (XOR), Parallel (AND), Inclusive (OR)) and Events (End). The new element is added after the selected stage or gateway. An option that cannot be added right now is greyed out with the reason.
Process settings	Opens the process properties in the side panel without leaving the canvas.
Tidy up / Undo tidy up	Arranges the whole diagram automatically. Undo tidy up restores your previous layout.
Mini map	Shows an overview of large processes for quick navigation.
Expand / Collapse	Gives the canvas and panel the full window. Esc first closes the open panel, then collapses.
Problems count	Shows No problems, 1 problem or the number of problems. Use Previous problem and Next problem to jump to each one.

Processes that have no saved layout open with the automatic layout. Connectors route around cards.

Work with stages and other shapes

Stage cards show a tile for who the stage is assigned to, the stage title, a summary of the assignee and how many On Entering and On Exiting flows it has. The tile icon tells you the assignment at a glance:

Icon	Assigned to
One person	User
Two people	Team
A group	Each Team Member
A task list	Custom (Single task) or Custom (Multi tasks), or nothing assigned yet (Not assigned)

Card actions:

• + (Add next stage) adds a stage after this one and connects it.
• Add escalation stage adds the stage the process moves to when this one is overdue. See Escalations.
• Delete stage (Delete gateway, Delete end) appears when you hover over the card.

Connect two elements by dragging from a card and dropping anywhere on the target card. You do not need to aim for a handle. Dropping back on the same stage does not connect it to itself.

Connectors show the transition’s title, or its condition, together with its position in the evaluation order. They show Default for a gateway’s default path, Always for paths leaving a parallel gateway, and Condition not set when a condition is still missing.

Docked panels

Click a card or a connector to open its panel beside the canvas. Only one panel is open at a time, and selecting an element pans the canvas so the element is fully visible.

• Stage panel: sections General, On Entering, Assignment, On Exiting, Escalation and Docs, in the order the stage runs. One section is open at a time. See Stages.
• Gateway panel: the gateway Kind, how many incoming and outgoing transitions it has, and Docs. See Gateways and ends.
• End panel: the end’s name and Docs.
• Transition panel: the source and target, the Evaluation order with Move earlier and Move later, the Guard condition, the Default path switch (gateways only), and Docs. See Transitions.

Resize a panel by dragging its edge, or with the arrow keys on the resize handle. Your browser remembers the width.

Every stage, gateway and end has a unique name. They share one set of names, so a gateway cannot have the same name as a stage. New gateways are named Gateway0, Gateway1, and so on; new ends End0, End1. The Docs section of each element holds an optional title and description for your team.

Problems and saving drafts

The problems list collects everything that would stop the process from publishing, grouped by the element it belongs to. A stage you have just added shows a single entry: “Not set up yet: add a title, owner, due date, assignment and completion criteria.” Every message is explained in Validation messages.

You can save a draft that is still incomplete. A stage can be saved without its task title, task due date or assignee, so you can sketch the process first and fill in the details later. Publish runs the full validation and refuses the version until every problem is fixed. See Lifecycle and versions.

When a process cannot be read completely

If parts of a saved process cannot be read, the designer still opens with what it can read:

• A bar says “Parts of this process couldn’t be read, so they are left empty.” It lists the problems by place, such as Process, Precondition, a stage, a stage’s Assignment, a gateway, an end or a transition, and offers Open stage to jump there. Fill in the missing values and save to repair the process.
• If some parts had to be left out entirely, saving is turned off so that those parts are not lost. Ask an administrator to check the process definition.
• If nothing can be shown, the designer says “This process can’t be opened” and that nothing has been changed or saved. Use Try again, or send the technical details to support.

Related

• Stages
• Gateways and ends
• Validation messages
• Lifecycle and versions