Extending BPEL to Model Business Processes Involving Human Activities

BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) allows defining both business processes that make use of Web services and business processes that externalize their functionality as Web services. However, human activities cannot be described in BPEL as in workflows, which may be an important factor regarding the success or failing of business processes. WfM (Workflow Management), as one of the major method to analyze human activities and interaction, could provide hints to extending BPEL to accommodate human activities. This paper proposes a method towards this goal. The underlying concepts, such as business network modeling, messages and processes, method of workflow modeling and order of the activities, are explained.