# Starting With Flowable As Developer

**URL:** https://forum.flowable.org/t/starting-with-flowable-as-developer/4927
**Category:** Flowable Engine
**Created:** [November 23, 2019, 7:15pm UTC](https://forum.flowable.org/t/starting-with-flowable-as-developer/4927 "2019-11-23T19:15:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

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### Author: ![joram](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/forum.flowable.org/joram/32/26_2.png) [@joram](https://forum.flowable.org/u/joram)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2019, 10:08pm UTC](https://forum.flowable.org/t/starting-with-flowable-as-developer/4927/4 "2019-12-19T22:08:02Z")

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> [@paulxtiseo](#):
>
> I was wondering where does the overall process start? I see ProcessEngines, ProcessEngine and ProcessEngineConfiguration classes. I was wondering where do they get invoked and used?

A process instance is started (based upon a process definition) through e.g. the startProcessInstanceByKey method on the runtimeService.

The runtimeService can be retrieved from the ProcessEngine class, which gets built by a ProcessEngineConfiguration. The ProcessEngines class is just a simple helper class to build such an engine (but you can do this programmatically yourself).

The engine will inspect the definition and when it reaches a certain step (let’s say a user task), it will execute the associated behavior (e.g. the UserTaskActivityBehavior).

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