Substitution arrangement for impeded actors

[holly77]

Imagine an actor currently assigned to an open, urgent task is getting ill, etc.
Who will assume the completion of the task?

To be able to solve this issue, I believe there's got to be a locum, i.e. a proxy actor, for the impeded actor.

Do you know of any existing, generic solutions to this problems, that can easily be integrated into jBPM?

How do you solve this problem in your applications?

Any ideas, comments are welcome!

[kukeltje]

Who will assume the completion of the task?

Anyone you wish to. Just reassign the task to him/her with the jBPM api, no proxy actor needed

[kukeltje]

or use the webconsole

[holly77]

Yes, of course...

But this way I'd have to do the reassignment each time manually.
What I'm searching for is a more flexible, powerful solution for this problem.

So what you definetly need is a database, rule engine, etc. you can get a or a list of proxy actors from for the currently assigned actor.
These the task would then be assigned to, when the task is not being processed for a certain period of time, or whatsoever reason.

For sure this can be done in jBPM using actions, timers, etc.

But as it is a common problem, I thought there would be a generic solution, I could adapt and use, not having to reinvent the wheel...

[kukeltje]

webconsole yes, API no. The API is the most flexible way.... ANYTHING you can do in java can be done.

A database? yes or some other usermanagement solution
Proxy users? Not specifically, assign to a group, if someone picks it (assign *also* to an actor) that person should act on it. Removing the individual actor from it, makes it visible to the group again.

This is adapt and reuse. Reassignment policies etc are so specific (although a common problem, but that is workflow in general) that jBPM cannot provide a one-fits-all policy. One small action (generic, reusable) on a timer on a tasknode gives you the functionality you want... so...

This could be simplified a little in jBPM, e.g. to have a duedate event where you van put a generic action'listener' on is a little more simple, but it currently is not difficult.