The most common scenario for managed transactions is when using jBPM in a JEE application server like JBoss. The most common scenario to bind your transactions to JTA is the following:

  <jbpm-context>
    <service name="persistence">
      <factory>
        <bean class="org.jbpm.persistence.db.DbPersistenceServiceFactory">
          <field name="isTransactionEnabled"><false /></field>
          <field name="isCurrentSessionEnabled"><true /></field>
          <field name="sessionFactoryJndiName">
            <string value="java:/myHibSessFactJndiName" />
          </field>
        </bean>
      </factory>
    </service>
    ...
  </jbpm-context>

Then you should specify in your hibernate session factory to use a datasource and bind hibernate to the transaction manager. Make sure that you bind the datasource to an XA datasource in case you're using more then 1 resource. For more information about binding hibernate to your transaction manager, please, refer to paragraph 'Transaction strategy configuration' in the hibernate documentation.

<hibernate-configuration>
  <session-factory>

    <!-- hibernate dialect -->
    <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect</property>

    <!-- DataSource properties (begin) -->
    <property name="hibernate.connection.datasource">java:/JbpmDS</property>

    <!-- JTA transaction properties (begin) -->
    <property name="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory</property>
    <property name="hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JBossTransactionManagerLookup</property>
    <property name="jta.UserTransaction">java:comp/UserTransaction</property>

    ...
  </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

Then make sure that you have configured hibernate to use an XA datasource.

These configurations allow for the enterprise beans to use CMT and still allow the web console to use BMT. That is why the property 'jta.UserTransaction' is also specified.