Time for action – configuring human task deadlines

Next, we will configure the deadlines. It makes sense to define a deadline when a human task has to be fulfilled. This prevents scenarios where a human task is assigned to a certain person or group but gets forgotten. For example, we could define that the human task for approving the book store location should be fulfilled in a certain amount of time.

If the user does not fulfil the human task in the specified time, an action will be taken. This action can be expiration, renewal, or escalation. A human task can expire after a certain time. This means that the human task will expire and the control will be returned to the caller (in our case this is our BPEL process). As the user has not fulfilled the human task, the BPEL process will not get a decision; therefore, it will need to act accordingly. Although human task expiration might not look very useful at the first sight, it prevents a human task from waiting indefinitely for the...