jBPM is a Java based Business Process Management suite written by Redhat. jBPM, which I think is now formally named Red Hat Process Automation Manager, is a middleware platform for creating and processing Business Process Models on an application server or in the cloud. Furthermore, it also has the ability to be embedded into a microservice and deployed as a Springboot application. jBPM is also easily extensible, and a great many Java developers work with the Springboot framework. I think this sets jBPM apart from other Business Process software.
I am a software developer and do not know much about Business Process applications but it feels to me like business process platforms have traditionally separated the information being worked on from the process itself. As a microservice jBPM can be a part of an application instead of a separate application. When new information needs to be created then jBPM’s process flows can act directly on that information in concert with the application the information belongs to.
This seems to be a paradigm shift. Instead of merely being a reminder and coordination service and business process will be able to participate directly in the synthesis of enterprise information. I think this is worth looking more closely at but in order to do so software developers need to feel comfortable building jBPM microservices. This blog will help to accomplish that.
Going forward I will obtain the Springboot jBPM starter code and work it into a usable microservice. Stay tuned for further developments.
Integrated jBPM 
Hi Karl – I have referred to your guide and it has been super helpful to use jBPM as spring-boot. I have a question regarding the kjar dependency for container initialisation.
In current setup container is started using the kjar details provided in business-application-service.xml by resolving the dependency at application startup time using local maven.
I intent to pack this kjar in spring-boot application itself as just like any other maven dependency and let the application resolve from there itself, instead of looking into the local/remote maven at the startup. Do you think it would be possible and how? The reason for this is to create a spring-boot artifact which has all the dependencies within it to reduce any external dependencies.
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Hi Nikhil. It not easily done and there are instructions in the jBPM documentation. The biggest problem I had was solving the persistenceNamingUnit specified in those instructions. Good luck.
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hi karl ,
Read you blog on jbpm and spring integration. So i am trying something like this but instead of having workflow on kie server i am trying to keep it in my project itself as a bpmn file. Do you have any idea how to do that?
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