Reusing elements on the same diagram?

Amir Rosenblatt · Messages: 4 Offline

I'm putting together a set of diagrams and I'd like to reuse some of my Controlled Record elemnts within a single diagram. Mainly, I'd like to make it clearly and explicitly visible when data needs to be recorded onto the documents so I'd like to have them show up asd many times as needed without requiring a spider's web worth of arrows all pointing to one single icon for the element. I suppose I could use a note each time but the whole idea is to make it very easy to scan the diagram visually and see all the spots where data needs to be recorded.

E Keyes · Messages: 18 Offline

Amir-
I ran into the same problem with trying to link subprocesses to the parent process (I wanted the diagram block in the beginning and at the end). From my experience, you can't do it with this version. I believe someone posted about it in the suggestions forum for next update though. Until then, I would suggest either tracing it back each time (which would be confusing if you do it more than 2 or 3 times), or just putting a dummy record element in it's place (name it the same thing, but put a 1 in the title or something to that effect). Otherwise your note idea is good too.
~Elizabeth

E Keyes · Messages: 18 Offline

Actually, to correct myself, you don't have to change the name of the document by adding a number. You can have multiple documents named the exact same thing on a diagram, just not multiple instances of the same element. An easy way to make many copies of one element is to right click on the element when in the navigation tree to the left, and select "Duplicate". This will create a new document, activity, or whatever with the same information, right down to the hyperlinks. It will appear up in the Elements folder, with the same name but "Duplicate" in the title as well. You can delete that part if you want them all to look the same, then just use it however you want in the diagram.
Hope this helps, feel free to post here or message me if you need clarification!
~Elizabeth

Amir Rosenblatt · Messages: 4 Offline

For now I'm just linking the controlled record to each process that needs it and skipping the explicit visual pointer, as I'd like to keep this fairly simple until I have a better handle on how I want to do my process layout. I'm on my 3rd iteration now and I think I have a pretty solid idea of what I'd doing. Still, I'd really like to see examnples of more complex processes to get a sense of what a good level of granularity is in terms of breaking each process down into it's sub-activities. The two examples they have up are very very simplistic and between the lack of examples and the lack of documentation it's a bit tricky to know how to approach the whole thing.

E Keyes · Messages: 18 Offline

Here is a sample program I made that defines the different shapes and features. This is basically the way I'm approaching my project (mapping out a software development process). There's a main diagram "Cake Creation" that overviews what needs to be done, then 3 subprocesses. Let me know if this helps you at all, or if you need me to clarify something.
~Elizabeth