Subtasks

In the runtime environment, if a person who claims a task finds that they are not able to complete it by themselves, they can delegate portions of that original task to other people in the form of subtasks.

About this task

Typically, staff members who have already claimed a task can create a subtask when they can't complete the work by themselves. A subtask can be derived from an inline or stand-alone to-do task, as well as a collaboration task, and can be realized either as a stand-alone invocation or a collaboration task.

The lifecycle of a subtask usually looks something like this:

The staff member claims the parent task in the runtime environment through a user interface.
The staff member then initiates a subtask from an existing definition, and provides an input message for the subtask.
The parent task enters the WAITING_FOR_SUBTASK state, and will remain there until all of its subtasks, are complete. Subtasks cannot be deleted unless the parent task is first deleted. If the parent task suspends, resumes, terminates, or expires, all subtasks will be as well.
The subtask will enter the work queue, where it can be claimed by anyone in the authorized group.
When all subtasks have entered an end state, the parent task can then be completed.

When you are creating the human task definition, you can decide if the business case justifies the need for the creation of subtasks, and configure your definition accordingly. To control the creation of subtasks, proceed as follows:

Procedure

Open your task in the human task editor.

In the Details tab of the properties area, configure the Enable subtask creation check box according to the following choices:

Option	Description
Enabled	If this check box is enabled, then this human task definition will allow for the creation of subtasks in the runtime environment.
Cleared	If this check box is clear, then users will not be able to delegate portions of this task in the from of subtasks.

Example

To see an example of a subtask that you can build and run yourself, go to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/bpcsamp/index.html or , and click Human Task features > Subtask.