Multiple actions in one activity - best practices

Hello,

Follow up question to: CMMN authorization.

Since it is not possible to authorize case instances, I am looking for alternatives.

Are there any proven ways to have several actions in one activity? For example, I’d like to be able to send an e-mail in user task or fetch updated data from database. I’d prefer not doing it using gateways, because I feel it can get unwieldy.