Jeff, if I understand correctly the difference between my installation and yours is that I use the JMS system for async execution while you use the built-in database-based messaging system. For what it's worth, in my case I don't feel the need to use asynchronous continuations because of parallel processing (the multithreading is done by the app server and I can start multiple process instances in parallel) -- but because, having a series of nodes that take a long time to execute, I need to have shorter, one-node transactions so that in a web console I can have the status of the process. I only use async for shorter transactions around each node and I must say that I would find it very useful if jBPM did its database access behind a RequiresNew EJB (in "enterprise" deployment). That would allow people to have long-taking series of nodes in non-async processes. Ok, as to the solution, I added an attribute to node : | <node name="1st-slow-node" async="true" async-priority="1"> | ... | </node> | <node name="2nd-slow-node" async="true" async-priority="2"> | ... | </node> | <node name="3rd-slow-node" async="true" async-priority="3"> | ... | </node> | <node name="4th-slow-node" async="true" async-priority="4"> | ... | </node> | and a field to Node.java : protected int asyncPriority; and the corresponding mapping to the Hibernate file. When a Jms message is sent, its priority is sent using the node attribute. I haven't checked, but I suppose this should work in your case too, by simply changing the HQL query to do a join with Node and order by node.asyncPriority. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4091225#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...