Can you be a more specific please I have only a slight idea what you mean

I am working with the exact issue right now: that is, how do you implement users, roles, and permissions in jBPM without using the jBPM built in tables. Is that an adequate re-statement of your question?

In our situation, we have to pull user, roles and permissions (U/R/P) from an existing corporate system.

I know that I can change hibernate to NOT pull those tables, but this opens several questions:
1. If we use an external source for our U/R/P, can they still be used by JBPM to enforce swimlanes, etc.
2. Can we just point hibernate to external tables for U/R/P and still have it work?
3. Is the easiest way to do this use a third table to associate external and jBPM tables?

Thanks in advance...

ahhh... user handling meaning user management....

currently the most simple solution is to implement your own ExpressionAssignmentHandler.

1: see previous answer
2: if they have the same table definitions and content, yes
3: No