I always find that representing a task that can be optionally done at many points in a process, really complicates the resulting diagram. For example, "Process A" in the attached.
Is there a neater way to represent this?
In software flowcharting this is normally shown as an interrupt. It is quite normal to "Disable Interrupts" and later "Enable Interrupts" around bits of code where interrupts are not allowed.
That's about as clean as I can imagine. There are no crossing lines, etc. Flow is quite visual.
If you plan to detain process A, then, you might not want the shape to actually represent process A, but rather be a link to process A, like a subroutine call. Then, process A would return to the original calling point. Long way of saying Paul's "interrupt".
Wapperdude
Hi Anders,
same answer as my predecessors, but in other words.
In the example shown, I would chose a "link" shape for the repeating task and show the actual task separately to emphasize its repetitive charactere.
Hi all, thanks for your help, I'll try out on my diagram and see what it looks like. I think it'll help :)