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I'v raised a JIRA issue ( ACT-2117) about this.But to solve this problem i patched "org.activiti.engine.impl.form.FormPropertyHandler#createFormProperty" to read value of expresion if execution was null:
/* * Patched for StartForm form properties default value support, * No default column exists in Activiti Modeler to set default value for form property */ public FormProperty createFormProperty(ExecutionEntity execution) { FormPropertyImpl formProperty = new FormPropertyImpl(this); Object modelValue = null; if (execution!=null) { if (variableName != null || variableExpression == null) { final String varName = variableName != null ? variableName : id; if (execution.hasVariable(varName)) { modelValue = execution.getVariable(varName); } else if (defaultExpression != null) { modelValue = defaultExpression.getValue(execution); } } else { modelValue = variableExpression.getValue(execution); } } else { // Execution is null, the form-property is used in a start-form. Default value // should be available (ACT-1028) even though no execution is available. if (defaultExpression != null) { modelValue = defaultExpression.getValue(StartProcessVariableScope.getSharedInstance()); } // Patched for StartForm form properties default value support. else if(variableExpression != null) { modelValue = variableExpression.getValue(execution); } } if (modelValue instanceof String) { formProperty.setValue((String) modelValue); } else if (type != null) { String formValue = type.convertModelValueToFormValue(modelValue); formProperty.setValue(formValue); } else if (modelValue != null) { formProperty.setValue(modelValue.toString()); } return formProperty; }