[ http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPM-895?page=comments#action_12392258 ] Michael Thiele commented on JBPM-895: ------------------------------------- I had a hard time solving this problem. It's not a bug, it's just not well designed... You don't have to do some kind of bug fix like replacing above said code. You have to make sure, that the sub-process is already deployed, when the main process is being parsed from your processdefinition.xml file. So things like this won't work: ProcessDefinition pdload_sub = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("sub.xml"); ProcessDefinition pdload_caller = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("main.xml"); context.deployProcessDefinition(pdload_sub); context.deployProcessDefinition(pdload_caller); Instead you have to do it that way: ProcessDefinition pdload_sub = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("sub.xml"); context.deployProcessDefinition(pdload_sub); ProcessDefinition pdload_caller = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("main.xml"); context.deployProcessDefinition(pdload_caller); That's sometimes not that easy, since these method calls can be distributed different classes etc., but keep in mind, that resolving the sub-process definition from the given name takes place during parsing, not during deployment of the main process! Besides what Tom B. posted is right for the issue description: parsing of the definition xml has to take place after a JbpmContext has been created. After deployment of the ProcessDefinition it will be persisted with the jbpmContext.close(); in the finally block. If you parse outside the try block (that is without having created a JbpmContext) JBPM won't find the persisted sub-process referenced in the main process definition. -- This message is automatically generated by JIRA. - If you think it was sent incorrectly contact one of the administrators: http://jira.jboss.com/jira/secure/Administrators.jspa - For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira