...
Now effectively the processes remains unaltered. If the value of approval is "accept" it will route to the HOD. Any other value, and the email will be sent.
Forks
A fork is used when your process needs to split separate ways concurrently. That essentially mean that your process is now travelling to 2 separate paths (hence, fork). Lets say for an instance that in our given example, once the requestor submits his leave application, a notification gets sent to *both* his supervisor and the HOD at the same time. If that was the case, we'll need to add a route, set the split type to "and" and our process will look like:
NOTE: If done correctly, you'll see a little plus sign (+) show up in your route.
Joins
Joins usually occur when you have separate paths (usually caused by previous forks) in your process that you intend to merge. Lets expand our example a little father. Once the requestor as submitted his leave application, the both the supervisor and HOD are notified. Once they have responded, the application now ends up at the back office desk for farther processing. Now there are 2 types of joins available to you:
- XOR (or exclusive ORs in geek talk). Means the route is active and considered fulfilled once *any* of the transitions reaches it. Effectively, if you use the XOR option in your join route, the back office will be notified the moment either the supervisor or HOD responds.
- AND. Means the route will hold in wait for *all* the transitions to complete reaching it. Effectively, if you use the AND option, the back office will only be notified once both the supervisor and the HOD responds.
In any case, once we understand the essential route concepts, we'll move back to our application. Now we know that once the requestor submits an application, the supervisor will approve. If the supervisor approves, it will go to the HOD for approval. Given those circumstances, there are clearly 2 routes we'll need. One for when the supervisor approves and one for when the HOD approves. Again, while the position of the routes in specific swimlanes doesn't really matter, there's much to say for keeping our process legible; so after adding the routes, your process should look like:
