Animate business process with animacian

Animacian is a tool to help you make a process design active by presenting the flow in animation form. This can make your design more attractive by animating it. Besides, you can control the flow of animation yourself to help demonstrating your work to client with your annoation. Moreover, it helps validating your business process by listing out the valid and invalid execution paths. Finally, it calculates all possible paths for your business process, marking the result of process evaluation more accurate.

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Animating a path

Here we have a Business Process Diagram describing the business process of handling an order issued by a customer.

1. To launch an animation, select Tools > Animacian from the main menu, or press on the Animacian button on the toolbar, right click on the diagram and select Utilities > Animacian from the popup menu.
   
   This open the Business Process Animacian dialog box where you are can select and execution path to play in animacian.
   
   Let's go through different paths in this dialog box.
   The Paths list lists all possible executions of the process. You can select a path and animate it by pressing the Play button.
   
   The Components list displays the components that form the selected Path. Pressing on a component will highlight the first shape of the chosen path until the chosen shape, in the opening diagram.
   
   The Filter pane helps removing the undesired paths by specifying the end result of fork nodes. And the Option pane allows you to configure the behavior of animacian. We will discuss the Filter and Option panes in more details later in this tutorial.
   
   The buttons and slider at the top of the dialog are for controlling the flow of animation.
   
2. Select Path 2 in the Paths list, and the path will be highlighted in the business process diagram.
   
3. We can give more meaningful name to the paths so that they can be identified more easily. Double click on Path 2 and rename it to Order Complete.
   
4. Click on the Process Order task in the Components list and path start from the Start Event to Process Order are being highlighted.
   
5. Now press the Play button and the selected path will be animated.
   
6. You can pause in the middle of the animation, and move the slider to navigate to and fore the process.
   
7. You can go to the previous/next step in the business process by pressing the previous/next button, or pressing Ctrl+Left/Right shortcut key.
   
8. After you animating the path, you can then click the Show Dialog button at the bottom right hand side of the business process diagram to re-open the Business Process Animacian dialog.
   
9. Let's try out the filter. Press the Filter... button in the Business Process Diagram Animacian dialog.
   
10. The Filter Configuration dialog will be open. All the possible models involve in marking decision in the business process will be listed in the dialog. You can specify the path for each decision marking element in the combo box next to the element.
    
11. You can press the ... button next to the element to specify multiple values for the decision.
    
12. Select <=100 in the combo box next to amount>100? Press OK to commit.
    
13. Now only the paths satisfy the condition will be listed. For this case, only 2 are valid.
    
14. The paths can be filtered based on the flow type.
    
15. Besides select from our generated paths, you can also customize a path by selecting Manual from the combo box next to Paths.
    
16. Rename path will be shown on the path list automatically since they are considered as customized path.
    
17. Press the Add Path button to create a new custom path.
    
18. Shapes starting from the beginning of the business process (start event) to the first decision point (gateway) will be included automatically.
    
19. You can specify which way to go in the gateway by selecting the value from the combo box under gateway in the Components list.
    
20. The shapes from the decision point which you just specified the value to the next decision point will then be added to the path.
    
21. Go to the next decision point and select a value.
    
22. Repeat selection on decision points until a complete path is defined.
    
23. When you finished editing the custom path, you can uncheck Editable to lock the path.
    
24. Let's rename the custom path to Order Refunded.
    
25. Now let's go through the options for animating the business process.
    Show invalid paths
    Turning on this option and the invalid path in the business process will be highlighted. Otherwise invalid paths will not be listed.
    
    Dim other path
    This is for dim the non-selected paths when you animating the business process.
    
    Show start node when switch path
    This option will scroll the diagram back to the start node of the path when you switch between paths.
    Minimize when play
    This option specify to minimize Animacian to the bottom of the business process diagram when you animating the business process.
    Lock diagram when playing
    This is for disable the editing of the business process diagram when you animating the business process.
    Show documentation when playing
    Select this option and the documentation of the current task will be shown when you animating the business process.
    
    Play voice when playing
    Select this option and the voice documentation of the current task will be played when you animating the business process.
26. The presentation and behavior of the animating business process can be configured inside the Advanced Options dialog. Press the Advanced Options... button in the Business Process Animacian dialog to configure the presentation.
    

27. Property	Description
    Visited Error Fill Color	The color of the flow objects which are invalid.
    Visited Fill Color	The color of the flow objects which being executed.
    Active Shape Initial Fill Color	The initial fill color when the flow objects during execution. You can press the Preview button to animate the change of fill color during execution.
    Visited Line Color	The color of the flow which being executed.
    Visited Font Color	The font color of the flow objects which being executed.
    Visited Line Width	The width of the flow which being executed.
    Ball Color	The color of the token which is in the executing business process.

28. The speed for animating business process can also be configured inside the Advanced Options dialog.