I'm new to Drools (5.0.1) and attempted to create a simple workflow example using a WorkItem and can't seem to figure out how to have parameters passed to the WorkItem. I must be missing something obvious (not understanding variable scopes maybe?) but just can't see it. Below is the code I'm using: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <process xmlns="http://drools.org/drools-5.0/process" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xs:schemaLocation="http://drools.org/drools-5.0/process drools-processes-5.0.xsd" type="RuleFlow" name="ruleflow" id="com.sample.ruleflow" package-name="com.sample" > <header> </header> <nodes> <start id="1" name="Start" x="16" y="16" > </start> <workItem id="2" name="Test" x="435" y="97" width="80" height="40" > <work name="Test" > </work> <mapping type="in" from="p1" to="p1" /> </workItem> <end id="3" name="End" x="240" y="16" /> </nodes> <connections> <connection from="1" to="2" /> <connection from="2" to="3" /> </connections> </process> public class Test { public static void main( String[] args ) { KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newKnowledgeBuilder(); kbuilder.add( ResourceFactory.newClassPathResource("process.rf"), ResourceType.DRF ); KnowledgeBuilderErrors errors = kbuilder.getErrors(); if (errors.size() > 0) { for (KnowledgeBuilderError error: errors) { System.err.println(error); } throw new IllegalArgumentException("Could not parse knowledge."); } KnowledgeBase kbase = KnowledgeBaseFactory.newKnowledgeBase(); kbase.addKnowledgePackages(kbuilder.getKnowledgePackages()); StatefulKnowledgeSession ksession = kbase.newStatefulKnowledgeSession(); ksession.getWorkItemManager().registerWorkItemHandler("Test", new TestWorkItemHandler()); Map<String, Object> params = new HashMap<String, Object>(); params.put("p1", "param1"); ksession.startProcess("com.sample.ruleflow", params); } } public class TestWorkItemHandler implements WorkItemHandler { public void executeWorkItem(WorkItem workItem, WorkItemManager manager) { System.out.println(workItem.getParameters()); manager.completeWorkItem(workItem.getId(), null); } public void abortWorkItem(WorkItem workItem, WorkItemManager manager) { } } and the output: Could not find variable scope for variable p1 when trying to execute Work Item Test Continuing without setting parameter. {} Thanks in advance, -geoff