Working with the Human WorkList api and create your own WorkList application

In this blogpost I will explain what is possible with the IWorkflowServiceClient ( HumanTask java client )  so you can integrate this in your own Custom WorkList application.  This way you don't need to use the standard BPM worklist application, add some extra functionality and also don't need to create HumanTask ADF Task Flow and deploy this to the SOA Suite server.

This demo shows you the power of Fusion Middleware where you can combine SOA Suite workflow to your own ADF applications.

At the end of this blogpost I will show you the link for this demo application which also contains the BPEL to create the HumanTasks.

Here are some pics of the demo application. You will get an overview of the tasks assigned to the weblogic user ( normally this will be replaced by the user of the application ). The user can search on certain field, change the ordering and control the maximum rows.

And in combination with the ADF UIShell template of Oracle you can make a multi task handling application. Every task you click on will have its own Tab. Here you can also lookup the extra information which is necessary to the user so it can handle this task.

Time to go back to the code.

I will start with a BPEL which invokes a HumanTask and to make my life easy I will use the flexible text , date or url fields of the HumanTask for my own important data so I don't need to examine payload.
This way you can search on these fields and use it in your own task entity.

And map the payload fields to the flex fields in a Assign activity. These fields are located in the systemMessageAttributes element.

Next is to retrieve these tasks from the java / ejb client. Todo so I need two libraries bpm-infra.jar and bpm-services.jar. Copy these jars from the soa server so you don't get serial id versioning errors.

I will use on behalf of so I don't need to have the password of the user and I can do all the actions of behalf of this user.

Start with a property file or you can set some java parameters

soa.properties
soaserver=soaps3.alfa.local:8001
humantask.user=weblogic
humantask.password=weblogic1

or set these java parameters on the project
-Dhumantask.url
-Dhumantask.user
-Dhumantask.password

For the tasks I will connect to the HumanTask EJB and for the Identities I need to connect the Identity SOAP Service.


We need to have an IWorkflowContext which I can use for the query operation on the Task bean. I will first authenticate with the superuser and then on behalf of the user of my application.

In this query on the human task I can control which attributes I want to use in my application.

List<String> queryColumns = new ArrayList<String>(); queryColumns.add(TableConstants.WFTASK_TITLE_COLUMN.getName());

And if I want to have the payload or the comments, I need to do this.
List<ITaskQueryService.OptionalInfo> optionalInfo =
    new ArrayList<ITaskQueryService.OptionalInfo>(); optionalInfo.add(ITaskQueryService.OptionalInfo.COMMENTS); optionalInfo.add(ITaskQueryService.OptionalInfo.PAYLOAD);

Do ordering on the tasks.

Ordering taskOrdering = null;
if ( "PRIO".equalsIgnoreCase(orderBy) ) {
 taskOrdering = new Ordering(TableConstants.WFTASK_PRIORITY_COLUMN, true,false);
 taskOrdering.addClause(TableConstants.WFTASK_TASKNUMBER_COLUMN, true,false);
} else if ("ID".equalsIgnoreCase(orderBy) ) {
  taskOrdering = new Ordering(TableConstants.WFTASK_TASKNUMBER_COLUMN, false,true);
} else if ("ESC_DESC".equalsIgnoreCase(orderBy) ) {
  taskOrdering = new Ordering(TableConstants.WFTASK_EXPIRATIONDATE_COLUMN, false, false);
} else if ("ESC_ASC".equalsIgnoreCase(orderBy) ) {
  taskOrdering = new Ordering(TableConstants.WFTASK_EXPIRATIONDATE_COLUMN, true, false); }
}

It is also possible to do a search and add a fixed where condition. For this we need to have a Predicate where we can add the states we want to see.

List<String> correctStates = new ArrayList<String>(); correctStates.add(IWorkflowConstants.TASK_STATE_ALERTED); correctStates.add(IWorkflowConstants.TASK_STATE_ASSIGNED);

Predicate predicateBasic = new Predicate(
  TableConstants.WFTASK_STATE_COLUMN,
  Predicate.OP_IN,
  correctStates);

predicateBasic.addClause(Predicate.AND,
 TableConstants.WFTASK_STATE_COLUMN,
 Predicate.OP_NEQ,
 IWorkflowConstants.TASK_STATE_STALE);

This Predicate can be combined to an other Predicate with an other AND / OR and finally added to the queryTasks method of the workflowServiceClient.getTaskQueryService()


To make your life easier try to convert the tasks to your own entity  so you can use your own attributes instead of using text1 etc.

You can download, fork or improve the Demo application at github https://github.com/biemond/soa11g_examples/tree/master/HumanTaskListApp