1. In an application integration system for managing and/or monitoring a business process comprising a plurality of activities, events, and/or objects located in one or more resources external to the application integration system and a process engine thereof, a method comprising: during design time: introspecting business object types involved in the activities, events, and/or objects of the at least one resource, identifying potential state changes for the business object types, and establishing business object type state change to receiver couplings via a process monitoring agent in communication with the at least one resource and the process engine; and during runtime: causing the process monitoring agent to listen to the business object state changes in the at least one resource through an adapter; when a business object state change is detected by the process monitoring agent, causing the process monitoring agent to notify the local process engine of the detected business object state change by producing a document processable by the process engine in accordance with an appropriate coupling.