Issue migrating BPMN diagrams from Bizagi to ARIS

Alvaro Correia Junior on April 3, 2020

The procedure taken were:

In Bizagi, validate the diagram and correct any issues.
In Bizagi, export option to BPMN file, one diagram at a time.
In ARIS Architect, through explorer postion in the destination group and choose contents/import/bpmn file

The results:

Several elements of the diagram doesn't appear in the viewing version, they appear only on editing mode in Architect or Connect: activities, gateways, connections, pools and lanes.
In editing mode the gateways are presented as default mode (empty losangle symbol), even if they were modeled specifally as e.g. exclusive gateways.
It is possible to make some elements reappear on viewing, by changing them. Some examples: making gateways exclusive, they reappear; activities reappear if they are made user task, services task, etc. In those cases connections start to reappear.
Connections between gateways and between gateways and events never reappeared on viewing.
Descriptions are many times weird including xml-formating-like parts in both editing and viewing modes.
When exporting from ARIS and reimporting, those issues are not present.
When exporting from ARIS, importing on Bizagi, exporting again and reimporting in ARIS suffer the same issues. In Bizagi those ARIS-generated diagrams seem ok.
Diagrams generated by ARIS are imported as their original type. Bizagi-generated diagrams are imported as Enterprise BPMN.

What I noticed comparing the BPMN files generated by ARIS and by Bizagi for the same process resulting from item 7 above:

They are both xml-like files but very different.
For example I could not find in the Bizagi file the type of the diagram.
Bizagi file comes with several Bizagi elements mostly formatting.

My questions are:

My understanding from the experiences above the ARIS-generated files are more BPMN-compliant than the Bizagi ones. Or is there as flaw in ARIS BPMN importing?
Is there a guide ways or prerequisites for importing in ARIS, that could avoid the simptoms above?
Are there technical standards in the BPMN file required to guarantee a seamless importation in ARIS?
Is there a way to validate the Bizagi file before importing? Better yet a program or macro to transform the file?
Who did this before and could share experiences?

I am using ARIS 10 SR11 and Bizagi 3.6.0.044 (Oct 2019).

Many thanks for your collaboration.

Tags: #aris10; #bpmn; #import

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M. Zschuckelt on April 3, 2020

Hello Alvaro,

I cannot comment on the questions regarding Bizagi - no experience with that. The issue with elements not appearing in the Portal, while they appear in Architect seems to me like an issue with the method filter. Is it possible that you have a restricted method filter in place? Please make sure that if in doubt you have the entire method active both in Architect and the Connect Portal. To ARIS a Gateway symbol is different from an XOR-Gateway symbol. So it could be that your filter that is active during the import does not allow the latter and hence the Rule object is given the next best Gateway symbol that the filter allows. Also connections between certain kinds of symbols that disappear point in that direction. If you ever tried to build a BPMN method filter from a sample database it is a daunting task to model all possible symbol-symbol connections. Maybe your filter is missing some.

I can imagine that roundtripping back and forth can work, since BPMN tools are required to retain extensions as-is, when they do not understand them. So it could be that Bizagi-specific extensions re-appear in Bizagi when you transfer the files the other way.

EDIT: Besides "Entire method" the BPMN filter delivered with ARIS should be a safe bet, if you did not modify it. You could merge it with your method filter in order to be sure to have all BPMN stuff in it.

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MZ

M. Zschuckelt on April 3, 2020

Best reply

Hello Alvaro,

I cannot comment on the questions regarding Bizagi - no experience with that. The issue with elements not appearing in the Portal, while they appear in Architect seems to me like an issue with the method filter. Is it possible that you have a restricted method filter in place? Please make sure that if in doubt you have the entire method active both in Architect and the Connect Portal. To ARIS a Gateway symbol is different from an XOR-Gateway symbol. So it could be that your filter that is active during the import does not allow the latter and hence the Rule object is given the next best Gateway symbol that the filter allows. Also connections between certain kinds of symbols that disappear point in that direction. If you ever tried to build a BPMN method filter from a sample database it is a daunting task to model all possible symbol-symbol connections. Maybe your filter is missing some.

I can imagine that roundtripping back and forth can work, since BPMN tools are required to retain extensions as-is, when they do not understand them. So it could be that Bizagi-specific extensions re-appear in Bizagi when you transfer the files the other way.

EDIT: Besides "Entire method" the BPMN filter delivered with ARIS should be a safe bet, if you did not modify it. You could merge it with your method filter in order to be sure to have all BPMN stuff in it.

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Alvaro Correia Junior Author on April 7, 2020 as Reply to M. Zschuckelt
Hello dear Mr. M. Zschuckelt,

Many thanks for shedding light into this issue. The database was set to Demo method in its General properties. By changing it to Entire Method, the issue of having some objects not appearing is gone. Super!

I still have other issues that might be related to the Bizagi way of producing the source file and I am still investigating:

The gateway is presented as gateway only, despite being represented in Bizagi as an exclusive X-OR. This is not a major issue however, as X-OR gateways are the default type in BPMN as far as I know (not much). By searching in an ARIS-genarated file the exclusive gateways are noted by <semantic:exclusiveGateway while in the Bizagi one it has <exclusiveGateway. Not sure what this difference in structure would cause.

The worst remaining issue is the description of the diagram and the activities, that contains fragments of formatting brought to the ARIS property field. The documentation was generated in Portuguese and I tried some combinations of Language in Bizagi (it seems only affects the user interface there), and Languages in ARIS, not success. Example below, 1. is like it is presented in ARIS and 2. is like it is presented in Bizagi.

<p style="text-align:left;text-indent:0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-family:Segoe UI;font-size:8pt;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;">O objetivo do processo é realizar a padronização e controle de versão dos formulários institucionais, mediante a solicitação das áreas.</span></p>

O objetivo do processo é realizar a padronização e controle de versão dos formulários institucionais, mediante a solicitação das áreas.

many thanks,

Alvaro
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