🕠 💪🏼 🧔🏼 Token in BPMN. Definition, examples + video 🌻 🕖 👡

As part of the preparation of the BPMN course, I will expand some videos into articles for better understanding by the listeners. You can see the video tutorial at the end of the article.

The concept of a token in BPMN raises many questions, although in fact, this essence is extremely simple and useful. Let's start with a classic definition:

A token is a theoretical concept that is used to understand the behavior of the process in question. The behavior of process elements can be understood through how they interact with a token that moves through the process structure. Meanwhile, in runtime and modeling systems using the BPMN standard, it is not necessary to indicate a token in any form.

Simply put, a token is an entity that was introduced to control the work of a business process, debug and test it. So, in programming for such purposes, there is a step-by-step execution of the algorithm (debug mode). The programmer at any time understands at what stage the program is being executed, can track under what conditions this or that branch is turned on.

BPMN introduced a token for similar purposes. Those. it is essentially a mark that shows you which block of the process is currently being executed. By moving the token through the process, you can clearly track what will work in reality and how.

In order to work with a token, you must have the business process itself. Without it, the very concept of a token loses its meaning. Let's take a look at what a token is and how to work with it.

Example No. 1

Consider the process of purchasing a product (see the figure below). As you can see, it is quite simple, therefore we will not describe the process itself in detail, but will focus on the token.

At the very beginning of the execution of the process, the token is at the entry point. Next, we start moving it. The token can only move sequentially, moving from stage to stage of the process.