Wed, 2023-09-27 16:00
BG
Hello.
I'm quite new to ARIS cloud (Advanced) and would like to change the type of some object. Is it at all possible? So far, I wanted to do that in different occasions, when the scope of the analysis got progressively more clear:
- EPC Function > EPC Process Interface (and vice versa),
- Orga Position > Orga Role (and vice versa),
- switch EPC join operators
- change the type of a connection (such as RACI relationship or Orga chart link)
I would hope a generic type-modification mechanism might be available most of the time, optionally listing/removing relationships that are semantically incorrect for the new type and suggesting removing all of them or open all models where they appear.
If this feature isn't available yet but considered, a place to locate it could be the widget Property > General > Type label that could be turned into an editable drop-down list, a.o.
Another ergonomically-nice option could be to allow to drop the new object type ON TOP of the existing one.
Thanks.
Hi,
please make a difference between object type and symbol type of an object.
You cannot change the object type, e.g. from an event to a task in a BPMN model.
But you can change the symbol of an object, in case it is allowed in the model.
In the rich client (ARIS business architect/designer) you can do this via the object properties. In the Connect designer (browser) there is an action in the "start" toolbar to change the symbol. Just click it and you will see a list of symbols to choose from, e.g. other rule symbols.
If the symbol of your choice is not part of this list, it is either not allowed in the model, not allowed in your filter or it would be a change of the object type.
Bye,
Frank
Yes, changing the object type would be like discovering a horse is actually a spacecraft. So a position cannot be turned into a role, because it's an entirely different type of object.
You might turn an external organization into an internal one. There they remain org. units. The only change being that you bought the other organization.
Particularly with connections it is logically impossible to change the connection type. A connection is defined by its type and the 2 objects it connects. So if any of those have to change, it is a new connection and you may want to discard the old one.
There may be multiple connections of different type between the same 2 objects (e.g. RACI connections). For some rare cases it is even allowed to have multiple instances of the same connection type between the same 2 objects, e. g. in entity relationship modelling there is "has relationship to" between two objects of type "entity type".
Also consider, that the same object may occur in multiple models with different symbols. So if you were able to change the object type you would probably wreck the other models where it might not make sense to have that object type (in that context). The symbol would have to change in the other model, too.
thank you MM Weyand and Zschuckelt for your prompt answers.
I fully agree that changing an object's type is not be a common operation, nor to be taken lightly for semantic reasons. Still in a context where many analysts feed a joint repository, modelling errors/incoherences/approximations are bound to happen due to the subjective nature of the job, despite all the conventions we may agree upon beforehand.
Instead of tracking manually all the use of the said relationship (resp. object) that was wrongly elicitated, manually deleting every single occurence of it and then replacing them by an occurence copy of the appropriate (eventually new) relationship (resp. object), I was thus wondering if that tedious step could be done in a more user-friendly way (i.e. assisted/semi-/automated).
I understand it's not the case in ARIS, and remain available to discuss this use case if you ever meet similar needs.
Hello Bertrand,
I am not sure about ARIS cloud (Advanced), but if you want to correct modeling failures by substituting object types there is a standard report "Replace object types" in the category Administration (cf. SR 16 Help). It works on the whole database and creates f.ex. a new role definition with the appropriate connection defined by your method filter, but the same name (meaning?) as the position object it replaces.
Regards, Martin
Thanks Martin. I'll go look in this direction.