“The new BPEL4People specifications enable organizations to effectively add human interactions to their BPEL processes, significantly extending the breadth of composite applications that can be created using BPEL,” said Fred Holahan, co-founder and chairman of Active Endpoints. “ActiveBPEL for People provides our customers and partners with immediate access to technology based on the new specs, with the confidence of knowing that we will deliver automated migration when the final BPEL4People standards emerge from OASIS.”

Active Endpoints, Inc., a provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) orchestration solutions, has announced the general availability of ActiveBPEL for People, a new product that adds high-powered workflow and human interaction capabilities to the company’s ActiveBPEL Enterprise servers. ActiveBPEL for People is architecturally aligned with two new industry specifications: BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask, which form the foundation of standards-based human interaction using BPEL. Active Endpoints co-authored BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask, along with Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle and SAP.

Product Highlights
ActiveBPEL for People allows SOA developers to include human interaction to their BPEL-based composite applications. As defined in the BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask specifications, the product adds a “People” activity to the core BPEL syntax; it includes a comprehensive Task Manager infrastructure with pre-built end user application controls, and it provides an extensive array of programming interfaces for customization and interoperability. Key product components include:

People Activity: A new BPEL activity that extends the WS-BPEL 2.0 standard to support human interaction. The People activity automatically coordinates interactions with the Task Manager (described below) to ensure that human tasks execute reliably within the life cycle of their parent BPEL processes. In addition to business payload data, the People activity allows BPEL processes to exchange a rich collection of supporting information with the Task Manager service, including role and access specifications, document attachments, task timer and deadline criteria, and task presentation metadata.

Task Manager: A comprehensive service infrastructure for managing human interaction tasks. The Task Manager receives task instructions from the ActiveBPEL server, manages all task executions and coordinates with the ActiveBPEL server to provide full lifecycle management between tasks and their associated BPEL processes. The Task Manager infrastructure supports many popular workflow patterns including nomination, escalation and “four-eyes.”

End User and Developer Interfaces: Out-of-the-box end user controls that can be easily embedded into Web-based applications, including Task Inbox, Task Detail and Task Assignment. These controls are provided as AJAX components and include full source code. ActiveBPEL for People also provides an extensive suite of Task Manager Web services for high-productivity development of customized workflow applications in other environments such as Adobe Flex and Microsoft WebForms.

ActiveBPEL for People is available immediately from Active Endpoints as an add-on module to the ActiveBPEL Enterprise server. A version is also planned for the ActiveBPEL open source engine. It uses the ActiveBPEL Designer for complete design, test, deployment and debugging. An evaluation copy of the software is available at http://www.active-endpoints.com/product-download-form.htm?ls=abpeoplepr.