When laying out a more complex process, it often makes sense to break the process up into multiple sub-processes so that 1) those processes can be used in multiple parent processes, and 2) that your parent processes are organized in smaller chunks, which makes it easier to manage and maintain.

In this example, we have created a process based around the fulfillment of digital products sold in an Opportunity. Each product type has it’s own fulfillment process, which is called as a sub-process from the parent process.

The parent process is called “Close Opportunity” and it contains 3 steps with sub-processes: “Website…”, “Photo Shoot”, and “SEA Campaign”. The advantage of using sub-processes here is that these are self-contained fulfillment processes that are associated with the specific type of product sold. Also, by using conditional connectors, the actual sub-processes that run can be based on the products sold in an individual Opportunity, so a different mix of sub-processes can run in a parent process instance based on the composition of an Opportunity.

In Work-Relay, you can have the parent and sub-processes open in the same canvas. One of the sub-processes is shown below:

And another one:

So when setting up your processes, evaluate your overall process to see how you might be able to group a collection of steps into a sub-process.