Diagonal lines can become visually distracting to readers. Try to stick to horizontal lines with 90 degree bends.  In small examples this may not appear to make a big difference, but as your Process Map grows the effect will be significant.  Combine right angles with consistent grid spacing for great results.

A Start Point is used to represent the action that triggers or initiates a process.  Generally a Start Point should represent an action, not simply a condition or state.  For a Process Map documenting a customer support process flow, a Start Point may be “Customer Emails Support” or “Customer Phone Call Received.”  It is a [...]

An Activity represents a step in a process. The majority of your Process Map will be made up of Activity Elements. A simple best practice for Activities is to name it with a verb+noun phrase. Instead of giving the Activity a title like “Open the mail with the letter opener,” use “Open Mail” instead. [...]

Edges: An Edge, sometimes called an “arrow” or a “link,” is what connects each step in the process. Unlike the other Elements in this list, Edges do not appear in stencils. Instead there are two ways to create them:

Click the “Link Mode” button on the toolbar and then click your source Element and drag it [...]

Almost every process involves making a decision. Decisions should be concisely phrased questions with two exit Edges, one labeled “Yes” and one labeled “No.” You can’t always follow this tip, but generally when you want multiple outcomes from a decision (such as “A,B,C” or “yes, no,maybe”) you can break that one decision down into multiple [...]

An End Point represents  a terminal state of your process and can be thought of as the opposite of a Start Point.  An End Point does not have to be an activity or action taken by a person or system; it can be just a place holder to represent the terminal state.  If you are [...]

The Process Map Element doesn’t just give you a pretty diagramming canvas to work on; its icon also can appear on its own and/or on other Process Map canvases.  Place a Process Map icon on a diagram to represent a drill down into a sub process, an exit of one process to another, or an [...]

The default diagram background grid is made up of light colored lines placed 16 pixels apart and darker lines spaced 64 pixels apart. Almost all Elements in the Modeler will highlight with a 64×64px box. That makes it pretty darned easy to space Elements consistently the same horizontal and vertical distances apart. [...]

All Elements – Use consistent capitalization in Element names.  We recommend using title case.  This basically means capitalizing the first and last word as well as all other important words in the name.
All Elements – Avoid qualifiers, descriptions, and metrics in Element names. These are all vital parts of a process but nine times out [...]

Unlike many other Process Modeling tools on the market, the Synthis Process Modeler lets you capture detailed information about each shape you place on a diagram.  So while you can put a novel’s worth of text on your diagram, that does not mean that you should.  The simplest example, from the title of this section, [...]