A people activity contains the instructions and data a person needs in order to complete a task. When a business process requires a decision from a person, rather than an invoked service, use a people activity. Within the Process Developer, this is represented as a User Task:
In BPMN, a people activity is implemented as one of the following, depending on whether the activity contains a task or notification:
People Activity Containing a Task:
User Task
Manual Task
People Activity Containing a Notification:
Send Task
Message Send Event
The People activity starts when a task is sent to potential task owners and is complete when the task’s owner returns data to the process. Once the process receives the data, it can continue to the next execution step.
The following illustration shows a basic People activity, using a custom name, within a BPEL process.
The people activity is built with a task definition and other details through the activity’s Properties view or it can be built using Guide Designer. (See
Using Guide Designer User Tasks
for more information.)
When a BPEL process is deployed to the server and is instantiated, the task is sent to all potential owners and administrators. Anyone of these can claim ownership, work on, and complete the task.