IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Get started with IBM BPM > Key concepts
Business process definitions (BPDs)
To model a process in IBM Process Designer, create a business process definition (BPD). The business process definition can be based on an imported BPMN model.
A BPD is a reusable model of a process, defining what is common to all runtime instances of that process model. A BPD must contain a start event, an end event, at least one lane, and one or more activities.
A BPD needs to include a lane for each system or group of users who participates in a process. A lane can be a participant lane or a system lane. You can create a BPD that groups the activities of a group and a system into a single lane if that is your preference.
You can designate any specific person or group to be responsible for the activities in a participant lane. Each lane created is assigned to the All Users participant group by default. You can use this default participant group for running and testing your BPD in the Inspector. The All Users participant group includes all users who are members of the tw_allusers security group, which is a special security group that automatically includes all users in the system.
A system lane contains activities handled by a specific IBM Process Center system. Each activity needs an implementation, which defines the activity and sets the properties for the task. During implementation, a developer creates a service or writes the JavaScript necessary to complete the activities in a system lane.
For each BPD created, you need to declare variables to capture the business data that is passed from activity to activity in your process.
You can also add events to a BPD. Events in IBM BPM can be triggered by a due date passing, an exception, or a message arriving. The trigger that you want determines the type of event you choose to implement.
Related information:
Create a business process definition (BPD)
Naming conventions
Understanding service types
Adding process variables to a BPD
Modeling events