To continue our BPM training, today let's dig deeper in BPMN 2.0 more specific: activities, what is an activity in BPMN and how we can use it.

According to BPMN 2.0: an activity represents “Work that company or organization perform using business processes”

An activity is a rounded corner rectangle and named according to the work that has to be done.

There are two main types of activities in BPMN definition:

• Atomic
• Compounded

An atomic activity is defined as a task and represents an individual action in a process that doesn’t need to be broken down any further

A compound activity is defined as a sub process and represents work in a process that can be broken down to a final level of process model detail, a sub process can be represented in an expanded view that shows its details or in collapse view that hides its details.

Collapsed Sub Process Sample

A special type of activity is a call activity which references reused globally defined task or subprocess, call activity is represented with a thick border

  

Beside these main types of activities, BPMN 2.0 defines different behaviors and properties of activities which are visually annotated with standardized symbols.

For example a repeatable activity, a user performed a task, an automated task, and a transnational subprocess.