Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Adding Human Tasks to a Business Process
Problem
Your workflow cannot be completed by machines alone; your business process includes hu-
man beings who need to complete one or more of the steps.
Solution
Extend your orchestration work with one of the tools that implement the WS-HumanTask spe-
cification.
Discussion
The WS-HumanTask specification was first released in June of 2007, making it among the
newer WS-* specifications. This spec, published by OASIS, was written as a joint effort
between Adobe, Active Endpoints, BEA, IBM, Oracle, and SAP. Its purpose is to define a
standard way to include the fact that many business processes require people to do one or
more of the tasks. You can't always automate all of your processes—some things require hu-
man input or decision-making. Some things can be automated but haven't been yet. Using
WS-HumanTask allows you this flexibility.
WS-HumanTask offers a way to do roles-based work, and a way to define interactions with a
running process. For example, let's go back to the business process that provisions new em-
ployees. Perhaps there are a number of steps that can be performed by computers, such as
ordering business cards, provisioning a workstation, and so forth. But maybe once these steps
are complete, someone in HR needs to meet with the employee and have him sign certain
forms on paper for filing on a physical shelf. This is obviously not automated, and happens
outside the world of computers altogether. WS-HumanTask allows you to capture this idea.
In this scenario, once the executing process arrived at the point where the person in HR needs
to do her part, the process would notify her and then tap its fingers, waiting for her to perform
the work. Once she is done, she can notify the process of that (typically in a web-based form
running on a portlet), and then the process can continue going about its automated work.
Implementations
If you want to open up your business processes to incorporate people, there are a few vendors
that offer implementations for you to try.
