Flow form — Editing in Visio Building a flow from an external Visio diagram

You can create a flow from certain Visio diagrams directly, without the need to customize a template or redraw the rule using PRPC shapes. This facility allows the shapes, terms, and notation used by your company to carry over into the PRPC representation.

This facility also allows business analysts who are not trained as PRPC developers or do not have access to PRPC to contribute to applications.

Follow the process presented here to make an external Visio VSD file becomes the value of a Custom Field on the History tab of a flow. Then, you can convert the Freeform shapes to specific PRPC shapes (such as Assignment, Utility, and so on) with minimal changes in the visual appearance of the diagram.

1. Obtain a VSD file representing a business process.
2. Select > Integration > Import > Rule from File to start the Rule from File wizard.
3. Follow the wizard steps: Choose Flow as the rule type. Enter a flow name, a RuleSet, and RuleSet version.
4. The wizard creates a flow with availability set to No/Draft. Click the Flow Editor toolbar button () to start Visio.
5. Every shape now has Freeform as the type. For each shape, choose a PRPC type and click  Apply  . When one shape on the original diagram corresponds to multiple PRPC shapes, consider calling a subprocess to suppress the detail from the diagram.
6. Complete the shape properties panel as appropriate for the shape. Add comment shapes, text, colors, and so on as desired.
7. Replace each arrow or line on the diagram with a connector from the standard PRPC template.
8. Exit from Visio. Save the updated flow.
9. Change the rule availability to Yes. Test the flow.

At any time later, you can open the original, unaltered Visio diagram. The system saves this as a Custom Field value on the History tab.

	Custom Field
	About the Rule from File wizard

About Flows