Without wanting to sound rude, the original class posted was a *full* classdefinition and so the Tool variable *cannot* be declared somewhere else. jBPM uses reflection to set variables if the action contains a xml. Your example might demonstrate the *same* problem. The code invoked by the action might work, the action itself might not. Please provide a unittest (with embedded processdefinition and a *minimal* but crashing actionhandler that demonstrates this problem. Then I'm willing to investigate further. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4104751#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...