"brittm" wrote : Of course, if jBPM implemented a general business key, it would also need to support configuration in the process def or what it should be called. Otherwise, different kinds of keys (order/trouble ticket) could duplicate values, and a generic UI wouldn't know what to call the key. I think that naming the field anything other than "key" would be a question of user code policy. After all, users might think of a process instance as a "ticket" or a "request" or an "order", rather than as a process instance. Apart from possibly providing customizable resource bundles in the web console, I don't think this is something that should be dealt with by the jBPM core. Also, uniqueness is something that should be decided by the application developer. The developer may decide that every process definition gets a unique key, or they may decide that key is unique by process name. Or they may develop rules that we can't anticipate. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4017168#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...