Export and import
BPMN 2.0, .trac and PNG — what each format carries and what it does not.
Export always takes the current state of the canvas, not the original analysis. Whatever you moved, renamed or added is in the file.
BPMN 2.0 (XML)
For the BPM suite already running in-house — Camunda, Signavio, ARIS, bpmn.io. The file carries the layout, not just the semantics: every element gets its position and every connection its waypoints, so the diagram opens looking the way it looks here instead of landing as a heap in the middle.
| Here | In BPMN |
|---|---|
| Start / end | startEvent / endEvent |
| Step | task |
| Decision | exclusiveGateway; labelled exits become conditions and one unlabelled exit becomes the default flow |
| Document / file | dataObjectReference |
| Note | textAnnotation with an association |
What BPMN cannot hold — actors, systems, inputs and outputs, the timestamp in the interview — goes into each element’s documentation rather than being lost. The export deliberately produces no pools or swimlanes: the layout is ordered by reading sequence, and lane bands derived from it would overlap.
.trac (JSON)
The lossless format. It holds nodes, edges, positions and every field, plus a readable README in the same package. .trac files can be imported again — including ones from other tools, with automatic migration of types and fields and a notice listing everything that had to be adjusted.
PNG
The whole diagram as a high-resolution image, not just the visible viewport. For slides and tickets.