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Link events

Link events are intermediate events that connect two sections of a process.

They have no significance related to content, but facilitate the diagram-creation process.

tip

You can use link events to create loops, to skip sections of a process, or to simplify the sequence flow lines in the diagram.

Link events have a throwing link event as the "exit point", and a catching link event as the "re-entrance point". They are linked together by their link name. Multiple throwing link events can link to the same catching link event. A throwing link event cannot link to multiple catching link events.

In practice, two paired link events function the same as two intermediate none events connected via a sequence flow.

A pair of link events is equivalent to a pair of intermediate none events connected via a sequence flow

Link events can be very useful if you draw comprehensive process diagrams with many sequence flows. Links help avoid what otherwise might look like a “spaghetti” diagram. In the example below, a retry loop is created using the link events pair A.

A pair of link events is used to form a retry loop

Link events are limited to a single scope

Link events can only be used to link sections of a process within the same scope. I.e., they can only exist together on the root process level or within the same subprocess.

Similarly, a sequence flow cannot be drawn between flow nodes at different scopes. For example, a task in the root process level cannot connect to another task in a subprocess using a sequence flow. Link events have the same limitation.

Additional resources​

XML representation​

A manual task:

<bpmn:intermediateThrowEvent id="Throw_Link_Event_A" name="A">
  <bpmn:linkEventDefinition id="ThrowLinkEventDefinition" name="A" />
</bpmn:intermediateThrowEvent>
<bpmn:intermediateCatchEvent id="Catch_Link_Event_A" name="A">
  <bpmn:linkEventDefinition id="CatchLinkEventDefinition" name="A" />
</bpmn:intermediateCatchEvent>

References​