what does 'involvedUser' mean ?

[heymjo]

Hi,

The javadoc of TaskQuery.involvedUser says

/** Only select tasks for which there exist an {@link IdentityLink} with the given user */

but what does that really mean ? As an API user you would normally not deal with identity links so the description is kind of technical and means not much to me, unless i drill down to the identitylink javadoc which is not that helpful either to understand. Can someone just in plain terms say what 'involvedUser' means, something like  candidateUser + member of candidateGroup + assigned tasks ?

See also http://forums.activiti.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1671. The activiti-webapp2 has a component dedicated to this, so involvedUser must be an important workflow concept in Activiti ..

Thanks
Jorg

[trademak]

Hi,

Involved user means that the user has been linked to the task.
So think of it as a possible assignee of the task or somebody who can look at the status of a user task.

Best regards,

[heymjo]

So think of it as a possible assignee of the task or somebody who can look at the status of a user task.

Yet a possible assignee != a candidate user apparently, see Frederik's last message on the linked forum thread where he says

So if the user is a candidate for a task, the query will not return those tasks.

Also when you say

Involved user means that the user has been linked to the task.

–> linking users to tasks means executing AddIdentityLinkCmd right ? There are in taskservice 5 methods that do this

  public void setAssignee(String taskId, String userId) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, userId, null, IdentityLinkType.ASSIGNEE));
  }
 
  public void setOwner(String taskId, String userId) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, userId, null, IdentityLinkType.OWNER));
  }
 
  public void addCandidateUser(String taskId, String userId) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, userId, null, IdentityLinkType.CANDIDATE));
  }
 
  public void addCandidateGroup(String taskId, String groupId) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, null, groupId, IdentityLinkType.CANDIDATE));
  }
 
  public void addUserIdentityLink(String taskId, String userId, String identityLinkType) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, userId, null, identityLinkType));
  }

  public void addGroupIdentityLink(String taskId, String groupId, String identityLinkType) {
    commandExecutor.execute(new AddIdentityLinkCmd(taskId, null, groupId, identityLinkType));
  }

addCandidateUser adds an identity link yet it was said above that candidateusers do not cause a user to be 'involved' in a task.

This is all a bit confusing to me, so what am I missing ?  :?

[trademak]

Hi,

If you set a candidate user on a task, a task query will return this task when you query on involvedUser.
It will not return the task if you only set the person as owner, assignee or in a candidate group.
You can also add a custom user identity link and the involvedUser will return these tasks also.

Best regards,

[heymjo]

This does not make sense   

I made a quick test on a simple 2 step process definition. What it does first is testing if user "jorg" is a candidate user for a task. This returns true. Then i test for the number of tasks he's an involved user for, this returns 0. Then i add him as a candidate user to the same task he is already a candidate user for, and now all of a sudden he's an involved user on that task ?????????


        // "jorg" should have one task after the processinstance was created
        List<Task> myTasks =
                processEngine.getTaskService().createTaskQuery().processDefinitionId(processDefinition.getId())
                        .taskCandidateUser("jorg").list();
        Assert.assertNotNull(myTasks);
        Assert.assertTrue(myTasks.size() == 1);

        // now see if he's involved user on any task of the the process instance
        Assert.assertTrue(
                processEngine.getTaskService().createTaskQuery().processDefinitionId(processDefinition.getId())
                        .taskInvolvedUser("jorg").list().size() == 0);

        // now add myself to the task as candidate user
        processEngine.getTaskService().addCandidateUser(myTasks.get(0).getId(), "jorg");

        // and now all of a sudden i'm involved user on the task
        Assert.assertTrue(
                processEngine.getTaskService().createTaskQuery().processDefinitionId(processDefinition.getId())
                        .taskInvolvedUser("jorg").list().size() == 1);


the process definition is very simple, user "jorg" has the ROLE_EDIT permission assigned.


<definitions id="definitions"
             targetNamespace="http://activiti.org/bpmn20"
             xmlns:activiti="http://activiti.org/bpmn"
             xmlns="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100524/MODEL">

  <process id="ProcessVarSecurity">

    <startEvent id="begin"/>

    <sequenceFlow id="flow1" sourceRef="begin" targetRef="createReport"/>

    <userTask id="createReport" name="create the report" activiti:candidateGroups="ROLE_EDIT"/>

    <sequenceFlow id="flow2" sourceRef="createReport" targetRef="verifyReport"/>

    <userTask id="verifyReport" name="verify the report" activiti:candidateGroups="ROLE_EDIT"/>

    <sequenceFlow id="flow3" sourceRef="verifyReport" targetRef="end"/>

    <endEvent id="end"/>

  </process>

</definitions>

Please enlighten me, i still don't get the concept of involvedUser and its usefullness.