I am working on using Drools to manage authorization. I don't want to use the jBPM objects in my rules, so I created some simple wrapper objects. [just because I want to abstract from the Drools internals].
Here is what I do:
create a new process instance. kick start the process (signal it). as soon as the first TaskNode is encountered (started: - assert all my relevant business objects - assert a BpmSwimlane(name,actorId) for all SwimlaneInstances that exist at that moment - assert a PooledBpmActor(swimlaneName,pooledActorId) for all the existing PooledActors from every existing SwimlaneInstance - fire the rules - retrieve all PooledBpmActors