Excel import to BPMN or swimlanes?

Question

Is there a way to import a set of tasks and other shapes into a BPMN diagram from Excel (or ideally some other text-based format)

Answer 1

Unfortunately, importing additional elements into an existing diagram is not supported. The best you can do is using yEd's Excel import to create a second (BPMN) diagram and then merge the two diagrams manually.

And, yes, it is possible to use yEd's Excel import to create BPMN diagrams. To do so, the imported data needs to have some kind of "type" column which you can use to set the appropriate style template with yEd's properties mapper.