OIC: Somewhat "Hidden" Feature: Reusable Subprocess

This blog article describes how to configure input and output parameters for Reusable Sub-processes (BPMN Call Activity) in OIC Structured Process

It's more than once that I have see that OIC Process developers are not using the Reusable Subprocess in Structured Process, simply because they are not aware that you can pass on arguments to the Start event and from the End event, like you can for processes that start and end with Message Events.

I will not discuss the benefits of and when to use a Reusable Subprocess, I will save that for a blog posting soon to come.

The thing is, the parameters are somewhat hidden. You create a Reusable Sub-process by creating a process with a None Start and None End event, as in the picture below. To add parameters to both events you can do it like this:

1. Click on the Start Event.
2. From the hamburger menu choose Open Properties. This will show you the propertie of the Start Event, where (probably to your surprise) you cannot find the input parameters.
3. With the Properties tab of the Start Event still shown, click anywhere on the process canvas as long as it is not another component (event, activity, flow, gateway). Ta-da!!

 

You can now use the Reusable sub-process in any other process using the Call Activity:

As you can see you can pass on argument to it on the Input tab of the mapper, as well as pass on arguments from it on the Output tab.

That easy ;-)