Many end-to-end business processes require human interactions with the process. For example, humans may be needed for approvals, exception management, or performing activities required to advance the business process.

The human workflow component provides the following features:

• Human interactions with processes, including assignment and routing of tasks to the correct users or groups

• Deadlines, escalations, notifications, and other features required for ensuring the timely performance of a task (human activity)

• Presentation of tasks to end users through a variety of mechanisms, including a worklist application (Oracle BPM Worklist)

• Organization, filtering, prioritization, and other features required for end users to productively perform their tasks

• Reports, reassignments, load balancing, and other features required by supervisors and business owners to manage the performance of tasks

Figure 27-1 provides an overview of human workflow.

In Figure 27-1, the following actions occur:

• A BPEL process invokes a special activity of the human task type when it needs a human to perform a task.

• This creates a task in the human task service component. The process waits for the task to complete. It is also possible for the process to watch for other callbacks from the task and react to them.

• There is metadata associated with the task that is used by the human task service component to manage the lifecycle of the task. This includes specification of the following:

  • Who performs the task. If multiple people are required to perform the task, what is the order?

  • Who are the other stakeholders?

  • When must the task be completed?

  • How do users perform the task, what information is presented to them, what are they expected to provide, and what actions can they take?

• The human task service component uses an identity directory to determine people's roles and privileges.

  You can configure the identity store to use the embedded WebLogic LDAP, Oracle Virtual Directory, third-party LDAPs and Active Directory RDBMS. For more information, see Securing Applications with Oracle Platform Security Services.

• The human task service component presents tasks to users through a variety of channels, including the following:

  • Oracle BPM Worklist, a role-based application that supports the concept of supervisors and process owners, and provides functionality for finding, organizing, managing, and performing tasks.

  • Worklist functionality is also available as portlets that can be exposed in an enterprise portal.

  • Notifications can be sent by email, phone, SMS, and other channels. Email notifications can be actionable, enabling users to perform actions on the task from within the email client without connecting to Oracle BPM Worklist or Oracle WebLogic Server.