On an event storming board, the palette's Event Storming category holds the sticky-note notation for exploring a business domain in a workshop. Every tile drops an ordinary sticky note pre-filled with one of the notation's colours, because in event storming the colour is the meaning: orange says "something happened" to anyone who has ever stood at one of these boards.
They are normal stickies otherwise: type the fact on the note, move it, vote on it, comment on it. And because sticky notes keep their colour under every theme, the grammar survives restyling.
Where it appears
The category belongs to event storming boards. On a board started from the Event storming template, the palette opens on it, and it is the only category there: the board hides the palette's tool picker and categories, because adding a note, typing and dragging are all a workshop needs. Canvas tools stay on their keyboard shortcuts and in the command palette.
On any other tab the palette doesn't offer it. You can still add a note of any kind by name from the editor's Search panel; it keeps its colour, shape, marker capitals and short note menu there, but can be resized and doesn't tilt or snap to lanes.
The note grammar
- A Domain event (orange) is something that happened, written in the past tense: "Order placed", "Payment received". Events are the backbone of the board, laid left to right in time order.
- A Command (blue) is the intent that triggers an event: "Place order".
- An Actor (yellow) is who issues the command: a person or a role.
- A Policy (purple) is a reaction rule: whenever X happens, then do Y.
- A Read model (green) is the information an actor looks at to decide.
- An External system (pink) is a third party the flow touches.
- An Aggregate (pale yellow) is the thing commands act on, once the design gets that far.
- A Hotspot (red) marks a conflict, question, or risk, anywhere, at any stage.
Each kind has the shape of its real stationery: a square for events, commands, read models and hotspots, a wide note for policies, external systems and aggregates, and a small square for actors. Tap a tile to place one where you click (a ghost of the note follows the pointer), or drag it onto the board; a note dragged in opens straight into typing.
On the board
On an event storming board the notes behave like the physical kit rather than like diagram shapes:
- They are written in marker capitals and keep one size for life, with no resize handles; the text shrinks to fit a long phrase instead.
- Each lands with a slight hand-placed tilt, and snaps onto one of the board's timeline lanes.
- Actors always sit in front of other notes, and hotspots in front of actors.
- Right-click a note for a short menu: Cut, Copy, Duplicate, Bring to Front, Send to Back, Change Kind and Remove. The styling controls are gone, because a note's colour and shape are the notation. Change Kind re-colours and re-shapes the note in place.
Event storming boards covers the rest of the board: inserting a note between two others, the next-note buttons and the lanes.
Add from Photo
On an event storming board the category opens with the Add from Photo button, ahead of the eight note kinds: it reads the stickies out of a photograph of a real wall and adds the ones your board does not already have. See Adding notes from a photo of the wall. It is about the board rather than about adding one note, which is why it sits ahead of the notation with a divider after it. A self-hosted copy that hasn't been set up for photo reading leaves the button out.
One board, one wall
A board started from the Event storming template is a single layer: one wall of paper. Every note you drop lands on it, whatever its colour, so any two notes can be stacked in front of or behind each other (within the actor and hotspot rule above). The colours carry the meaning; nothing is filed away on a plane you cannot see.
On any other canvas the notes land on the active layer and can be resized, but keep their kind's colour, capitals and menu.
Start with orange only. The method's opening move is domain events, past tense, left to right in time order; the other colours join as the story firms up.
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