The webMethods product suite provides graphical user interfaces that allow you to carry out your business processing and management activities from a central location, using various webMethods components running on multiple servers. These activities include the completion of ongoing business processes that support the day-to-day business operations of your organization.

The webMethods product suite enables your organization to automate these business process activities. Business analysts and developers work together using Software AG Designer to create the automated processes that address your organization's business needs.

Many business processes require human actions, such as approving a purchase order, assigning a telephone number to a new employee, or investigating a problem with an insurance claim. These actions are typically implemented within a business process as tasks, and they can be started as part of a running business process or manually. When started, each task invokes an instance of a pre-defined task template that exists in My webMethods Server or Integration Server and executes in webMethods Task Engine.

Software AG Designer enables a task developer to design any kind of custom task required by a process as part of a task application. The task developer creates the task templates (known as task types) in Designer and publishes the containing task application to My webMethods Server or deploys the task type to Integration Server. When a task is invoked at run-time, it starts an instance of the specified task type in Task Engine.

In My webMethods tasks are assigned to a My webMethods Server user, role, or group; these assignments can be static (that is, defined at design time), or they can be determined dynamically at run time based on data in the process. It is possible to design a task so that when a task is started, a notification e‑mail is sent to the assignee, who can then log on to My webMethods and open the task from their task inbox.

Business data required by the task is passed from the process and is presented to the assignee through the task user interface. For example, in a new employee setup process, this business data could include the employee’s first and last names, the department the employee works in, employee number, start date, whether they are to have an office or a cubicle, and any comments or instructions from the hiring manager or HR reviewer. If your company works across several different campuses, it might also specify which campus or building the new employee is to work in.

Task user interfaces can be designed as part of the task application in Software AG Designer, and displayed to task assignees in My webMethods or in webMethods Business Console.

After opening the task, the assignee carries out whatever actions are required—for example, determining an office space for the new employee. As part of this task, the task developer can require that the assignee must enter the office number in the task before the task can be marked as complete. When the assignee marks the task as completed, the Task Engine notifies the process of the outcome of the task, along with any new business data (such as the office number).

The task developer can add custom logic to the task to carry out other actions as part of the task activities. For example, suppose your organization maintains a simple database of office assignments. It is possible to configure the task to obtain a list of available offices from the database and provide them (through the task interface) to the task assignee for selection. When the assignee marks the task as completed, the task can check the database of office assignments to ensure the selected office was not already assigned by another worker in the time since the list was obtained. If it was, a message to that effect can be returned to the task assignee, prompting them to select another office. If the selected office is available, the task can update the office assignment database accordingly.