About Swimlanes

Swimlanes are a way to visually group states in an application workflow, so others can quickly understand the workflow design. A swimlane typically represents either the activities performed by the same role or participant, or a distinct phase of the process defined by the workflow.

For example, you could put all states that are associated with software development tasks into one swimlane. Another swimlane could include states that are associated with testing tasks. The Any, Deleted, and Email states that have no owner could be moved into an "unassigned" swimlane below or to the right of the other swimlanes.

Note the following points about swimlanes:
  • Swimlanes are displayed in the workflow as horizontal or vertical bands. You can toggle between a horizontal or vertical orientation.
  • The left and right edges of horizontal swimlanes, and the top and bottom edges of vertical swimlanes automatically cover the entire workflow.
  • You can tailor the appearance of swimlanes by modifying their colors, labels, boundary lines, and so on.
  • A swimlane encloses the states that are in its boundaries when you add the swimlane to the workflow. You then drag states among swimlanes to depict the process in the best way.
  • A sub-workflow inherits swimlanes from its parent workflow.
  • Swimlanes are included in the workflow diagrams that users available to users.

Key Benefits

Related Topics

Adding a Swimlane

Selecting a Swimlane

Renaming a Swimlane

Deleting a Swimlane

Moving States Between Swimlanes

Changing Swimlane Styles

Changing Swimlane Orientation

Changing Swimlane Order

Resizing Swimlanes