Designing the Procedure Dialog › Flows › Dialog Flow Diagramming Conventions

Dialog Flow Diagramming Conventions

The following illustrations show the conventions for the Dialog Flow Diagram:

The following list details the keys to the illustration:

• The bars represent procedures and procedure steps and are always accompanied by the name of the procedure or step to the left of the bar.
• The symbol for procedure step appears only if a procedure has more than one step.
• If multiple procedure steps support a procedure, they may be contracted on the diagram into a single procedure bar.
• Transfers and links, discussed in the next section, represent flows between procedures and steps. The arrowhead indicates the direction of the flow.
• A dialog flow (that is, a transfer or link) to a multi-step procedure must always flow to the first step in that procedure.

The following illustration shows a CA Gen Dialog Flow Diagram:

The following list details the keys to the illustration:

• MENU is a single-step procedure, so has no procedure steps directly beneath it.
• At execution time, when certain exit state conditions occur as a result of menu selection by the user, explained in How Flows Are Initiated, the MENU procedure can initiate transfers to the procedures TAKE ORDER, CANCEL ORDER, and MAINTAIN CUSTOMER.
• TAKE ORDER is a procedure with two procedure steps: ADD ORDER HEADER and ADD ORDER ITEMS.
• Under certain conditions, the ADD ORDER HEADER procedure step can initiate a transfer to its companion procedure step, ADD ORDER ITEMS. Under other conditions, it can initiate a link to a different procedure, MAINTAIN CUSTOMER.
• Under certain conditions, the ADD ORDER ITEMS procedure step can initiate a transfer to ADD ORDER HEADER.
• Note that no flows enter ADD ORDER ITEMS from outside the TAKE ORDER procedure because it is not the final step of a procedure.
• CANCEL ORDER is a single-step procedure.
• MAINTAIN CUSTOMER is a multi-step procedure with its procedure steps and the flows between them contracted.
• Note the ellipsis (...) beneath the procedure label. This indicates that MAINTAIN CUSTOMER has undisplayed procedure steps.
• Two flows enter Maintain Customer. If Maintain Customer were expanded to show its included procedure steps, the flows would be shown as entering the first procedure step of MAINTAIN CUSTOMER, just as the flows in Take Order are shown as entering Add Order Header.