BPMN standard User task explained in Oracle BPMSuite

There are some differences between the standard BPMN 2.0 and the ones that are available in Oracle’s BPMSuite. I will give a brief overview of the major differences and when to use.

The traditional BPMN describes just the activity flow. It describes when steps occur, in what order. It also describes start and end points, conditional and concurrent paths.

What BPMN does not define but Oracle’s BPMSuite does is:

• How steps are performed
• Who performs them, and where?
• Based on what business rules
• Executable BPMN

Last thing about the differences: BPMN does not have simulation parameters or KPI’s. Oracle’s BPMSuite does.

Today I will zoom into the interactive activities. And how to configure the outcome of human tasks and how to add parameters.

A simple human task looks like this:

The simplified interface Oracle BPM Studio provides, hides the complexity of the Human Task editor by exposing only those fields that are relevant to Oracle BPM and not the extra fields you see in the SOA Human task editor. What is important is to keep track of the outcome. You can configure the outcome of the human task as follows:

Creation of Human Task

1. In the component palette, choose the user task (the different styles represents standard user patterns)
2. Change the name of the user task and click the second tab (implementation) to define/implement the user task
3. Click on the green plus sign to create the specific task details.
4. Leave the pattern on simple. The different types of patterns serves as approval management patterns and extend the standard human workflow patterns with features like email, web-based worklist, declarative modeling, etc…

To configure the outcome of a Human Task:

1. In the Create Human Task dialog, click the Browse button next to the Outcomes field.
2. The Outcomes dialog appears.
3. Select one or more outcomes, or click the Add button to add a new custom outcome.
4. Optionally click Outcomes Requiring Comment, to select those outcomes that require comments.

How to Add a Parameter to Human Task

You can add multiple parameters to a Human Task to build the Human Task payload. Oracle BPM Studio uses this parameters to create the data association of the user task that uses the Human Task. To add a parameter to a Human Task:

1. In the Create Human Task dialog, click the Add button in the Parameters table.
2. The Data Objects dialog appears.
3. Select a data object from the Data Objects dialog and drop it on the Parameters table.
4. The selected data object appears in the Parameters table.
5. Close the Data Objects dialog.

Optionally you can mark the parameter as editable by selecting the Editable column in the Parameters table.

How to Configure the Data Association of a Human Task

When you create a Human Task you can also define an data association. The data association target maps the result of the Human Task to a String data object in your BPM project.

To configure the data association of a Human Task:

1. In the Create Human Task dialog, click the use associations button.
2. The Data Association dialog appears.
3. Select a String data object from the Data Objects dialog and drop it on the Output Target field.
4. Close the Data Objects dialog.

This is one way to create a human task, tell your process how to perform this step and make it executable. In the next blog I will point out a decision table within Oracle’s BPMSuite