The things that could be important are: - is the jbpm jar outside your war/ear - is the problem that jbpm cannot find classes in a war or jar in the ear? It could be that the jBPM processclassloader is the culprit. It it is sometimes to restrictive. There is a jira issue to be able to configure jbpm to use the context classloader as it's parent. So therefor the question of where the jBPM jar is (in the sar?). If it is outside the ear, it is obvious it cannot access classes in the ear/war/jar. J2EE does not allow this (although you can configure JBoss AS to support this) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3965591#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...