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Using Swim Lanes

Swim lanes are a visual tool that enable you to organize how you display your iProcess Engine procedure objects. Swim lanes can be vertical or horizontal. By specifying category labels when you create your swim lanes, you can group procedure objects into categories of your choice.

You can choose whether to use swim lanes or not, depending on your requirements. This section describes:

•	Enabling Swim Lanes

•	Swapping Between Swim Lane Types

•	Configuring Swim Lanes

Enabling Swim Lanes

To enable swim lanes:

1.	From the iProcess Modeler, click Swim Lanes.

2.	Select one of the following from the drop-down list:

−	None. If you have swim lanes already enabled, you can select None if you want to disable them.

If you disable swim lanes then the procedure objects are de-categorized.

−	Horizontal. Select Horizontal if you want horizontal swim lanes.

−	Vertical. Select Vertical if you want vertical swim lanes.

3.	The Swim-Lane Properties: dialog is displayed.

The following table describes the properties that you can set for a swim lane.

Property	Description
Label	The name of the category to be used for this swim lane. The name can be up to 128 characters.
Lane Color	The color to be used for the swim lane.
Text Color	The color to be used for the label text.

Once you have configured the properties of your swim lane, click OK. If you selected a swim lane type, a single swim lane is created. All the procedure objects are moved below the new swim lane.

4.	Depending on your requirements, drag and drop your procedure objects to the swim lane you have just created.

5.	To add more swim lanes, see Adding Swim Lanes.

6.	See Configuring How Swim Lanes are Displayed for information on how to configure how your swim lanes are displayed.

Swapping Between Swim Lane Types

Depending on your requirements, you can swap between swim lane types. For example, you can swap from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.

If you swap between horizontal and vertical swim lane types, the top-down layout mode is swapped.

If you swap from a swim lane type to no swim lanes:

•	the procedure objects are de-categorized.

•	any extra space around the objects is automatically compressed.

Configuring Swim Lanes

The following section describes how to edit the swim lanes. It describes:

•	Adding Swim Lanes

•	Creating Child Swim Lanes

•	Selecting Swim Lanes

•	Resizing Swim Lanes

•	Deleting Swim Lanes

•	Editing Swim Lane Properties

•	Configuring How Swim Lanes are Displayed

Adding Swim Lanes

To add a new swim lane:

1.	Right-click the header of the chosen swim lane.

Depending on your requirements, select either:

−	Insert Swim-Lane Above...

−	Insert Swim-Lane Below...

The Swim-Lane Properties dialog is displayed.

2.	See step 3 in Enabling Swim Lanes for information on how to configure the swim lane properties. Click OK. A new swim lane is inserted.

3.	Depending on your requirements, drag and drop your procedure objects to the swim lane you have just created.

Creating Child Swim Lanes

You can nest swim lanes within other swim lanes, depending on your requirements. To do this, create a child swim lane in the swim lane where you want to nest other swim lanes. To create a child swim lane:

1.	Right click the header of the swim lane you want to create a child swim lane from and select Add Child Swim-Lane.... The Swim-Lane Properties dialog is displayed.

2.	See step 3 in Enabling Swim Lanes for information on how to configure the swim lane properties.

3.	Click OK. The child swim lane is created.

4.	Repeat steps 1 -2 for each child swim lane that you want to create.

5.	Depending on your requirements, drag and drop your procedure objects to the child swim lane(s) you have just created.

Selecting Swim Lanes

You can select a swim lane or multiple swim lanes, depending on your requirements, using CTRL + Click. This is useful, for example, if you want to delete more than one swim lane or you want to highlight particular procedure objects, as shown below.

You can also select all the procedure objects within a swim lane by right clicking the header of the swim lane whose procedure objects you want to select and clicking Select all objects.

To deselect a swim lane(s), press Escape or click on another swim lane.

Resizing Swim Lanes

You can resize a swim lane by dragging the separating lines between the swim lanes.

Deleting Swim Lanes

You can only delete a swim lane if it is empty, unless it is the last child swim lane. If it is the last child swim lane, the parent swim lane inherits the procedure objects.

To delete a swim lane:

1.	Move the procedure objects from the swim lane you want to delete to another swim lane. This is because you cannot delete a swim lane if it contains procedure objects.

2.	Right click the tab header of the swim lane you want to delete and select Delete. The swim lane is deleted.

If you are deleting multiple swim lanes, use the Delete key.

Editing Swim Lane Properties

To edit the properties of a swim lane:

1.	Right-click the header of the swim lane whose properties you want to change and select Properties. The Swim-Lane Properties: dialog is displayed.

2.	See step 3 in Enabling Swim Lanes for information on how to configure the swim lane properties.

Configuring How Swim Lanes are Displayed

To configure how your swim lanes are displayed, click Options > Swim Lanes. You can select one of the following:

•	Plain Style. This is the default option when you enable swim lanes. Select this if you want to display your swim lanes as squares.

•	Tablet Style. Select this if you want to display your swim lanes as tablets.

•	Border. Select this if you want to display your swim lanes with a border.

•	Color Header Only. Select this if you only want the swim lane header to be displayed with a color rather than the whole swim lane.

•	Shadow. Select this if you want to display your swim lanes with shadows.

 

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