How to open a BPMN Diagram online?

This short tutorial shows how to open a Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 Diagram using the Kie Sandbox online tool.

The Kie Sandbox is an online tool which allows you to design business process and decision diagrams. You can also import/export existing diagrams from/into it. Here we go!

The KieSandBox is available at this address: https://sandbox.kie.org/#/

Firstly, as you can see from the Home page, you can Create a set of resources such as:

• BPMN workflows
• Decision Models
• PMML (Predictive Models)

In this article we will focus on managing BPMN Files.

Opening an existing BPMN Diagram

To open one existing BPMN diagram you can either use the Import From URL (for example if it’s in a GitHub repository) or Upload it from your PC.

As an example, let’s open the following BPMN Diagram: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kiegroup/jbpm/main/jbpm-examples/src/main/resources/evaluation/Evaluation.bpmn

Choose Import From URL and enter the above URL.

As you can see, we have imported the example Evaluation Diagram into the Kie Sandbox and we can edit it online.

Opening a BPMN Diagram directly from GitHub

If you are running Chrome, it is possible to install the following extension which allows you to view your BPMN diagram directly from GitHub: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bpmn-dmn-test-scenario-ed/mgkfehibfkdpjkfjbikpchpcfimepckf

Next, install the Chrome plugin and open any BPMN file available on GitHub. For example, here is the Evaluation Diagram as you can see it from GitHub:

The visualization is read-only however you can click on the “Open in Kie Sandbox” button to modify it with the online editor.

How to Test a BPMN Diagram

In order to test your BPMN Diagram you need a toolkit for running Business Processes such as jBPM.

As an example, you could create a JUnit test which starts jBPM in embedded mode and starts your BPMN Process. Alternatively, you can open the jBPM UI (called Business Central), import your Process and test it from there.

In order to guide you through the above scenarios, we have several resources available here:

Here is the list of recommended tutorials:

• jBPM 7 tutorial – getting started with the opensource BPM
• Getting started with jBPM Business Central