Unfortunately you cannot link any element to a flow in the manner your desire.
Howver your can simulate it, by right-clicking the sequence flow and selecting "Attach Note or Constraint..." from the context menu.
This will attach a UML Note element (same shape as a BPMN Object, but with a White Background). You cannot change the colour of this background.
A more creative solution is as below:
This issue was asked previously and here is my original answer
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Unfortunately you cannot link an DataObject to a message (or sequence flow) as per the BPMN 1.1 notation.
The closest I have come to a work around is to Right-Click the flow, and Attach a Note or Constraint. I chose a note to represent the DataObject
Alternatively you can do this (surprisingly!)
1) Add two Activities to a BPMN 1.1 diagram
2) Switch the toolbox to Class diagram
3) Create an association class relationship between the two enties, thereby creating a class to represent the DataObject
4) Set the navigation on the association
5) Create a sequence flow between the Activities and drag it to be on top of the association created in 3)
6) To make the class look like a BPMN 1.1 DataObject, create a shapescript to draw the DataObject shape and assign it to a Class stereotype <<DataObject>>
7) Change the association class stereotype to <<DataObject>>
For your information the shapescript is:
shape main {
startpath();
moveto(0, 0);
lineto(80, 0);
lineto(100, 20);
lineto(100, 100);
lineto(0, 100);
endpath();
fillandstrokepath();
moveto(80, 0);
lineto(80, 20);
lineto(100, 20);
}
shape label {
setorigin("SW", 0, 5);
print("#NAME#");
}
Cheers
Phil
