User Task
A task explicitly performed by a person, the little user icon that marks "human in the loop".
What a user task represents
A user task is a task with a small user (person) icon in its upper-left corner. It says explicitly: "a human performs this step". The human might be a specific role, a specific team, or anyone matching a rule. The point is that the engine cannot complete the task by itself. It has to create a work item and wait for a person to finish it.
User tasks are the counterpart to service tasks. A service task is automated (gear icon), a user task is manual (user icon), and a plain task with no marker is intentionally vague, usually early in modelling, before the performer is decided. Making the distinction explicit matters for ROI analysis, for automation roadmaps, and for runtime: engines treat user tasks as work items that land in a user’s inbox, while service tasks are invoked immediately.
When to mark a task as a user task
- The step requires human judgement that is not yet automated: reviewing, approving, classifying, writing.
- The step involves a handover from one person to another: who picks it up is determined at runtime.
- The step is part of a regulatory or oversight requirement: "a human must approve this" is a business rule that matters.
- Skip the user-task marker if the source of the work is a document processing or data-entry task that is a candidate for automation. Use a plain task and let the transformation analysis decide.
User tasks in LucidFlow
LucidFlow’s ESSII framework looks at every user task and asks: can this be eliminated (is the step still necessary?), simplified (is the human effort disproportionate?), standardised (is it the same across runs?), integrated (can a system handle it instead of a person?), or intelligized (can an AI do what the human does?). A user task in the source diagram that becomes a service task in the target diagram is the most visible form of ROI: a job that used to take a person 15 minutes now takes a service-task-plus-AI ten seconds.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a user task and a manual task?
BPMN 2.0 distinguishes them subtly: a user task is performed by a person *using a system* (the engine creates a work item they action in a user interface); a manual task is performed by a person entirely *off-system* (the engine has no visibility). Most tools fold manual tasks into user tasks in practice.
How does an engine know who should do a user task?
Via an assignment expression, usually a role, a group, or a specific user reference on the task definition. At runtime, the engine looks up the rule, creates a work item in the inbox of the matching users, and waits until one claims it.
Can a user task have a timeout?
Yes, attach a timer boundary event. "If the user has not completed this within 48 hours, escalate to their manager" is modelled as an interrupting timer boundary on the user task with an outgoing flow to the escalation handler.