An Introduction to BPEL standard and its extentions - SoberIT

3.3.1.1 Human rolesIn BPEL4People process, four generic human roles are defined: process initiator, process stakeholders,potential owner and business administrators [13, 15].Process initiator is the person who triggers the process instance. The initiator can be either determined bythe process automatically or specially assigned.Process stakeholder is the person who can influence the progress of a process instance. Their responsiblecan be adding attachment, forward task or follow the process progress. If no process stakeholders arespecified, the process initiator becomes the process stakeholder. The process stakeholder is onlyassociated with a process instance.Potential owner is the person who is assigned to claim and complete the activity.Business administrator is the person who is allowed to perform administrative actions on the businessprocess. If no business administrators are specified, the process stakeholders become the businessadministrators. Unlike process stakeholder, a business administrator has an interest in all processinstances and not just one.3.3.1.2 People linkPeople links are used to bind a group of people to a business process, they are similar to partner linkswhich are used to bind Web services to processes. People links are usually associated with generic humanroles.Using human roles and people link, a people activity is defined (Section 3.3.2.1).3.3.2 ScenariosPeople interaction can be as simple as manual approval, such as giving approval/rejection to loan request.People interaction can be more complex involving data, such as feeding customer feedback to the process.The scope of BPEL4People is described in five scenarios [15].3.3.2.1 People activityThe new BPEL activity – people activity is not performed by any software, it is the task assigned to a userand it requires action be performed by that user [15]. The actor of a people activity is determined by apeople link. In PBEL4People, BPEL engine does not invoke Web services, instead it creates anddistribute a task to certain user. And user needs to carry out specific action on task. Like BPEL activity,people activity has name and input/output variable, it allows the specification of deadlines. Moreover,people activity can set a priority, which prioritizes the work people work on [15].3.3.2.2 Initiating processWhen a group of people involved in a business process, it is necessary to appoint people who initiate abusiness process.