Notify Parent Instance from Call Activity

BPMN & Modeling Discussion & Questions
1

Hi,

I want to model a process instance which creates several call activities. It can happen, that in one of these call activities it is decided that the parent process instance and all of it’s call activities have to be ended.

As I understand, it is sufficient, to bring the parent process instance to an end and all call activities are ended as well.

So my question:
Is there a way to notify (e.g. with a message) the parent process instance from within a call activity in some way?

I can think of a construct like this …
Parent process:

The call activity process has a message end event to trigger the message boundary event in the parent process instance:

2

Your best bet is to use an Escalation event.

3

Thanks a lot! This is exactly what I need. Never used escalation before …

After some tests I came up with this solution:

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Call activity process:

The final trick was to wrap the whole thing in a subprocess where the escalation boundary event can be caught.

4

Looks good - you could also use it combination with an Event Subprocess if you don’t want to wrap the whole thing up in an embedded subprocess.

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1 Like
5

Thanks for the additional advice.

But I’m not quite sure how this would meet my requirements to end the parent instance and the call activities if the escalation event is thrown.

Maybe I don’t see the solution right now, but could you maybe give an example how my solution would work without the subprocess?

Cheers
Chris

6

Hi,

Sorry if I jump to @TheFriedC’s question, but I have a similar case.

I have a Call actibity which calls a subprocess. When the subprocess reaches an event, I want to notify someone in the parent process. I’m thinking of the following:

image
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But how to trigger the non-interrupting boundary message event from the child process? Preferably with JAVA code.

Thanks

7

Hi again,

I tried the following:
From the subprocess, I have an end message throw event with the same name as the boundary message event of the parent activity.
However the message is not caught.
Is this intended behavior?
(Also tried with an intermediate message throw event in the child subprocess)

Well, I will finally use escalation events but I was wondering why it doesn’t work with messages.
So, how can one trigger a message boundary event?
With (delegate) code (Java/REST API)? Or maybe the message through event has to be on the same process?

8

It depends can you upload your model and also show exactly how you’re trying to trigger the message?

9

boundary_messages.bpmn (9.3 KB)

boundary_messages
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Here’s an example.
Normally I have these two processes in 2 different bpmn files.

The message thrown by the child process is not caught by the boundary event in the Call Activity.

10

I think you need to look at how the message throw event should be implemented. It requires a lot more than just adding the name of the message. You can find out in the docs page and there is also some stuff about messaging in this video.

12