Setting expiration values on invoke and human task activities in a business process

You can set expiration values for invoke and human task activities so that their execution will end after a specific period of time has either elapsed or been reached.

When the expiration setting on the activity is triggered in the runtime environment, the engine will throw a wpc:timeout fault that can then be dealt with in a fault handler. In addition, if the continueOnError flag of the activity is cleared, the activity will stop, thus enabling manual repair.

To set an expiration value, proceed as follows:

  1. On the canvas, click either an invoke or a human task activity.
  2. In the Properties area, click the Expiration tab.
  3. To create an expiration condition using the process' default expression language, click Create a New Condition. Otherwise, choose an appropriate language from the drop down menu.
  4. If you choose Timeout, you will have the following three options to configure the period of time that the activity should hold.
    Option Description
    Simple calendar This is, as the name suggests, a simple arithmetic calendar. Enter the time in a straight-forward format (without spaces) such as 20minutes or 2hours.
    WebSphere CRON calendar This is a built-in calendar that uses a list of term expressions representing elements of time to calculate the interval. Examples of this type of calendar can be found in the Related Information section below.
    User-Defined calendar Use this option to select a calendar other than those provided. You can use the fields to name the calendar, and point to a valid Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) location.
  5. For all other expression language choices, you will be presented with the following two options:
    Option Description
    Date Choose this when you want the expiration to occur when a specific time and date has been reached.
    Duration Choose this when you want expiration to occur after a certain period of time has elapsed.
  6. Depending on the expression language that you are using, you can choose from any of the following expression types:
    Option Description
    Visual Choose this to use the visual snippet editor to graphically compose Java™ code.
    Java Choose this to write a Java expression yourself.
    Literal Choose this to enter the desired values directly into customized fields. Calendar values are represented in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
    Text Choose this to compose an XPath expression.
Note: Expiration is a BPEL extension, so the tab will not appear in the Properties area if these capabilities were disabled when the process was created.
Related concepts
Dealing with faults in your process

Related information

Setting duration values for your human task
Interface UserCalendar

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