I’ve been around Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite (jBPM) and Red Hat Process Automation Manager (RHPAM) for many years. Over that time, I’ve learned a lot about the lesser-known aspects of this business process management engine.

If you are like most people, you might believe that user tasks are trivial, and learning about their details is unnecessary. Then, one day, you will find yourself troubleshooting an error like this one:

User '[User:'admin']' was unable to execution operation 'Start' on task id 287271 due to a no 'current status' match.

Receiving one too many similar error messages led me to learn everything that I know about user tasks, and I have decided to share my experience.

User tasks are a vital part of any business process management engine, jBPM included. Their behavior is defined by the OASIS Web Services—Human Task Specification, which has been fully adopted by Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0—the standard for business processes diagrams. The spec defines two exceptionally important things that I will discuss in this article: The user task lifecycle and task access control. Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Note: These troubleshooting tips are applicable to Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.2 and above and Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7.

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