Task instances can be customized. The easiest way to do this is to create a subclass of TaskInstance. Then create a org.jbpm.taskmgmt.TaskInstanceFactory implementation and configure it by setting the configuration property jbpm.task.instance.factory to the fully qualified class name in the jbpm.cfg.xml. If you use a subclass of TaskInstance, also create a hibernate mapping file for the subclass (using the hibernate extends="org.jbpm.taskmgmt.exe.TaskInstance"). Then add that mapping file to the list of mapping files in the hibernate.cfg.xml