Exploring Human Tasks

Most business processes depict real-life, business or scientific scenarios, which need the interactions of a human at least once in its workflow design. Typically, these interactions are initiated by the process itself, and requests a user input to proceed. These human interactions, which are initiated by business processes are referred to as Human Tasks.

After deploying Human Tasks, you can use the Human Task Explorer of the Business Process profile to explore it. To do this, in the Management Console, click Main → Manage → Processes → List → BPEL and click the Process ID of the deployed process.

Adding a human task

The "Deployed Task Configurations" window opens with the newly-added human task listed. For example,
- Package Name: The name of the package.
- Task Definition: The task definition
- Type: Whether this definition is a Task or a Notification
- Status: The package status.
Click on a selected "Task Definition".

Using the Human Task Explorer

You can access the WS-HumanTask-Explorer of EI Business Process via https://<hostIP>:9445/humantask-explorer/login.

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After login with valid username and password, user will be directed to the task inbox.

Inbox

Tasks assigned to logged-in user are listed in the MY TASKS tab.

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Click on a task list entry, the user will be directed to the task view. Tasks can be filtered based on status by clicking on the particular status in left sidebar.

Task View

Task view display the detailed description of the task. The content of the UI depends on the relationship of logged-in user and the viewed task.

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Task Abstract	List down abstract details (subject, description)
Task Operations (1)	Provide support to change state of the task (only provided to task owner) Start : Start progress of the task Stop : Stop progress Release : Release assigned task (release operation will update state of the task to READY, which allowing other users to claim it to themselves) Suspend : suspend task. Resume : resume suspended task Fail : fail the task Assign : assign task to another user. Skip: skip a task from further action Note that allowed operations differ depending on the state of the task and user permissions.
Additional Task information (2)	Additional information related to the task. This section consists of three tabs: Comments : list down comments added by users (users can add comments to tasks, which are viewable to them) History : list down history details of state changes of the task Attachments : list down attachments related to the task including downloading (users can add/download attachments to tasks, which are viewable to them) and uploading attachments.
Summary (3)	Summary of task information

Claimable Tasks

All the tasks which is claimable to the logged-in user, are listed down in the claimable tasks tab.

By clicking on each entry, the user can view the task and claim it in the task view.

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When viewing a claimable task, which is in READY state(not assigned to a particular user), the task view is similar to above. The viewer can assign it to himself by clicking the claim button, located top left corner among task operations.

Apart from the pages explained above, Notification tab displays the notifications to the user. Search tab can be used to search tasks. Search has options to search by task status and category. Results can be ordered based on the task name, created date, updated date or priority.

For a set of samples on managing human tasks, see Human Task Samples.