By creating scenarios from criteria within your business, you can closely model the behavior, efficiency and results of your process models. Analyzing output from simulations can allow you to:

In support of process simulation, Designer provides the Process Simulation perspective, which includes several views that allow you to configure your simulations and interpret their behavior: the Resources view, the Run Settings view, and the Advanced Run Settings view. The Resources view contains Resource and Cost information; these are displayed in the Properties view for a selected resource. The Run Settings view contains Run Settings and Statistics information. The Advanced Run Settings view contains information about Variables, Historical Data, and Optimization. The Optimization page contains additional pages to configure Objective, Decision Variable Limits, Constraints, and Run Options.

Additional step configuration is supported in the Properties view for various step types. The Schedule, Scenario, Metrics, and Transition Distribution pages allow you the opportunity to finely tune your simulations.

You can create a process simulation directly from an open process, or you can create a new simulation file and then add one or more processes to it. You can create a simulation from an imported XPDL process, and you can create a simulation while importing if the XPDL contains simulation information. See Importing XPDL Processes.

In Designer's Process Simulation preferences, you can set options for recording animation, automatic switching to the Process Simulation perspective, and the types of gauges displayed during an animated process simulation. The Process Simulation control panel provides additional options for viewing a running simulation, in real time or playback mode.

After you have run a process simulation, you can generate a Process Simulation report that captures detailed information about the scenario simulated, and whose data allows you to create charts, graphs, and other materials based on the results of the simulation.