About the Task Start Portlet

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The Task Start portlet enables a user to start a new task on the Task Engine Administration page of My webMethods. Include a task start portlet in your task when you want the user to be able to start a task manually in the run-time environment, or remotely with the Task Engine API. For more information, see IBM webMethods Task Engine API and Service ReferenceWorking with the Task Engine APIs . If a task is used exclusively within a process (where it will be triggered only by the process), you do not need to include a task start portlet.

The user interface components of the task start portlet are displayed after the user starts the new task on the Task Engine Administration page of My webMethods. In addition, the task start portlet can placed on any custom page to enable a non-administrator user to start tasks (you must also grant the user access to this page). The default task start portlet contains the following components:

A data flow that calls a modal dialog box that appears when the task is started, containing:
- A formatted message panel for displaying any JSF context messages; for example, "The new task has been successfully started."
- A show/hide details button to display the task ID number.
- A link to open the new task.
- An OK button to close the dialog box.
A New Task panel that contains:
- An empty property subgroup where you can add controls.
- A Toggle Optional Task Info button that enables the user to view or hide the following task information:
  - Name—The name you want to assign to the task.
  - Description—The description you want to assign to the task.
  - Priority—The priority you want to assign to the task.
  - Custom Task ID—The custom task identification you want to assign to the task.

The following buttons are also included:

Start—Starts a new instance of selected task type.
Return—Closes the Start page and returns the user to the Task Engine Administration page.

You can add or remove components or further customize the default view to address your specific business needs.

Note: With the Task Update wizard, you can add standard attachment support to the Start portlet. Using attachment support in the Start portlet, you can queue a standalone task in the runtime and specify an attachment at start time to test attachment behavior and network connections. Unless you want to use this test capability, you would normally not add attachment support to a Start portlet.