This topic applies only to the IBM Business Automation Workflow Advanced
configuration.

Creating and starting a task instance

This scenario shows how to create an instance of a task template that defines a collaboration task (also known as a human task in the API) and start the task instance.

Procedure

Optional: List the task templates to find the task template ID (TKTID) of the collaboration task you want to run.
This step is optional if you already know the task template ID.
```
FilterOptions fo = new FilterOptions();
fo.setSelectedAttributes("TKTID, NAME, NAMESPACE");
fo.setSortAttributes("NAME");
EntityResultSet ers = task.queryEntities("TASK_TEMPL", fo, null, null);
```
The results are sorted by name. The query returns an array containing the first 50 sorted task templates.

Create an input message of the appropriate type.

Entity entity = (Entity) ers.getEntities().get(0);

// create a message for the selected task
ClientObjectWrapper input = task.createInputMessage((TKTID) entity.getAttributeValue("TKTID"));                       
DataObject myMessage = null ;
if ( input.getObject()!= null && input.getObject() instanceof DataObject )
{
  myMessage = (DataObject)input.getObject();
  //set the parts in the message, for example, a customer name
  myMessage.setString("CustomerName", "Smith");
}

Create and start the collaboration task; a reply handler is not specified in this example.
The example uses the createAndStartTask method to create and start the task.
```
TKIID tkiid = task.createAndStartTask( entity.getAttributeValue("NAME"), 
                                       entity.getAttributeValue("NAMESPACE"),
                                       input,
                                       (ReplyHandlerWrapper)null);
```
Work items are created for the people concerned with the task instance. For example, a potential owner can claim the new task instance.

Claim the task instance.

ClientObjectWrapper input2 = task.claim(tkiid);
DataObject taskInput = null ;
if ( input2.getObject()!= null && input2.getObject() instanceof DataObject )
{
  taskInput = (DataObject)input2.getObject();
  // read the values
  ...
}

When the task instance is claimed, the input message of the task is returned.