I'm a junior BA and read that in BPMN, a lane can only contact one process, so by that rule, I'm guessing alternative paths are not allowed/discouraged. If that is correct, then I'm wondering whether I've done the right thing in showing only the process involving the account manager's receipt of a customer enquiry (Fig. 1).

I ask because the account manager's way of handling a customer enquiry is different to technical support's method (the account manger later raises a ticket in a separate system which my company wants represented as a lane incidentally).  Should there be a separate process for technical support?

Also, I've been told by a colleague that in order to maintain consistency, certain can be used in my process diagrams. The shapes in fig.1 are not widely used at my company and so I created a similar process using basic shapes (Fig. 2)

Fig.1 Customer enquiry involving standard BPMN shapes

 Fig.2 Same process but with basic shapes

 Feedback welcome

Dave

I downloaded a BPMN tutorial which mentioned a lane should only feature one process. Based on this, I wasn't sure if it would be good practice to feature the alternative paths within the lanes as they are additional processes that risk cluttering the diagram.

So  like this?

In a peer review of my 1st iteration, some senior colleagues recommended including systems as lanes.  This was due to a history of stakeholders being confused by diagrams featuring BPMN's wide  variety of shapes, as well as the lack of a uniform BPMN standard. This means that the various gateway, event shapes and the artifact symbols are discouraged.

Anyway, thanks for your help and let me know your thought please

D