An organization model serves to acquire a group of persons (users) that meet some requirements.

The model defines a hierarchy of organization elements, which group persons, the users of the application. The model can contain the following:

A Role represents a group of persons with common expertise.
A Unit is an umbrella element for one or multiple roles.
Decompositions establish relationships between roles and units.

On runtime, a runtime version of the role can be assigned to a person: the person then belongs to the role and any ancestor role or organization unit. A runtime role can define parameters with values. Parameters of any ancestor can be used. If an ancestor has a parameter with the same name as its descendant, the parameter on the descendant is considered the same parameters as the parameter on the ancestor.

To acquire persons in a role or organization unit, call the unit or role as <ROLE_UNIT>(<MAP_OF_PARAMETERS>). You can use the functions in the human module of the Standard Library for additional features.

Organization Roles

An organization role groups persons with common behavior, rights, expertise, etc.

One role is usually assigned to multiple persons and one person can have multiple roles. It can be decomposed to other roles and be a target of a decomposition, descendant of a role or organization unit: a person with a role belongs to all ancestor roles and organization units.

Roles can define parameters, which allow you to exclude persons who are in the role or its descendant role but do not have the specified parameter with the specified value.

Iconic role notation

Decoration Role notation

Organization Unit

An organization unit is an umbrella element for roles: A person is part of an organization unit if they belong to a role that is a descendant of the organization unit.

Note that users are added only to roles, not organization units.

It can be decomposed to roles or other organization units and be a target of a decomposition originating from an organization unit: a person with a role belongs to all ancestor roles and organization units.

Organization units can define parameters which allow you to exclude persons who are in a descendant role of the unit but do not have the specified parameter with the specified value.

Iconic Unit notation

Decoration Unit notation

Decomposition in Organization Models

Note: GO-BPMN uses two decompositions: decompositions in goal structure and decomposition in organization models. The latter is documented below.

Organization units and roles can be decomposed with the decomposition relationship in one or several other organization elements: This enables you to create organization hierarchies and group organization elements; a person who belongs to a role belongs also to all its ancestor roles or role units.

One organization element can be the target or origin of multiple decompositions. However, decompositions cannot create cyclic relationships.

Decomposition can be used between the following organization elements:

Unit-to-Unit decomposition: breakdown of an Organization Unit into a sub-Unit;
Unit-to-Role decomposition: including a Role in the Unit;
Role-to-Role decomposition: child Role representing a more specialized Role;

Note: The Role-to-Unit decomposition is not supported.

img{Decomposition.png, Decomposition notation, 90px}

Resolving Roles and Units to Persons

When you request persons with a role, it is resolved as follows:

Without a parameter value or with a parameter value null or "*", all persons with the role or its descendant roles are returned (role parameters are ignored).
with a parameter value, it returns all persons with the role or its descendants which have the parameter with the specified parameter value or do not have the parameter (if the parameter has a different value, the person is excluded).

When you request persons of an organization unit:

without a parameter value or with the parameter value null or "*", it returns all persons with a descendants of the organization unit (parameters are ignored)
with a parameter value, it returns all persons with a descendants of the organization unit which have the parameter with the specified value or do not have the parameter (if the parameter has a different value, the person is excluded).

Hence, parameters of the role units, organization units and roles provide a filtering mechanism over persons that belong to a role unit.

Note that if you define a parameter for a unit or role, it is recommended to add it to its child roles or units as well. Otherwise, the parameters will not be available on the children.

Example: Consider the following organization model:

Unit decomposed in two Roles

If a task is assigned to the Organization Unit Support (for example, performers -> {Support([->])}), it is assigned to all persons that have the Middleware or Platform Runtime Roles regardless of their parameter values.

If a task is assigned to the Organization Unit Support with a parameter (for example, performers -> {Support(["product"->"Wildfly"])}), it is assigned to all persons that have the Middleware or Platform Runtime Roles with no parameter or with the parameter product set to Wildfly.

Example: The role TechnicalExpert defines the parameter expertise.

Parametric Role definition
The person Eva is a technical expert without a field of expertise: she is considered an expert in all fields and has the runtime role TechnicalExpert with no parameter.

Person view of a person with the runtimee role TechnicalExpert with no parametric value
John and James are technical experts specialized in hydraulics and electrics: They have the runtime roles TechnicalExpert with the expertise parameter set to hydraulics and electrics.

Person view of a person with the runtime role TechnicalExpert with the 'hydralics' expertise parameter

If a task is assigned to TechnicalExpert([->]), the task is assigned to

all three persons regardless of the parameter values (any of 'TechnicalExpert' can perform the task);

If a task is assigned to a TechnicalExpert("expertise"->"hydraulics", the task is assigned to:

Eva, the technical expert with no parameter value,

John, the technical expert with the hydraulics parameter value James is left out.

Organization Element Import

For presentation purposes, you can add the views of the Roles and Unit from other organization definitions to the diagram in your definition as Role and Unit Imports. Note that such imported Role or Unit views cannot be decomposed, however, they can be a target of a Decomposition.

Note: Roles and Unit from other Modules become available for Diagram import only after their Module is imported.