Hi Jim I will try to answer your questions, but it seems that you already mark the question as answered by yourself.

1) What is the best tool to use for developing jBPM workflows?  Drools flow?  Eclipse? BPMN2?   Can I deploy a process from there?

I as a developer at this point prefer to write my own XML files, or use the eclipse editor to sketch the process diagrams and then tweak them to work in the jBPM5 runtime. The same happens with the Web Editor. Drools Flow is a deprated term at this point. BPMN2 is the standard notation, it's not an editor. 

2)  How do I load a jBPM process definition into jBPM5.1?  I would like to drop it in a directory on AS7 and have AS7 pick it up automatically and deploy it.  Is that possible?

You can create that integration if you need it, it's not there yet. We usually deploy our processes into guvnor and configure our application to go to the guvnor repository to pick the definitions.

3) How do I define jBPM users and groups?  I am using the user.properties and roles.properties files included in the jbpm-console-server and am able to log into the jbpm console.  Are these the same users and groups for the jbpm tasks?  It doesn't seem to be the case.  If not: How do I load users and groups into jBPM5.1?

The users from the console are not the same users that will be handled by the task component. There are different concepts and you can unify them if you want to, but once again, as far as I know it's not integrated.

4) What version of Drools should I use for AS7?  Has anybody integrated this successfully?  Does drools 5.2 install into AS7?

I know that some guys are working on it, but once again it's up to you to make it work for your needs. Drools and jBPM5 are environment agnostic and if you want to run it in a specific container you will need to deal with the integration. This will probably will be fixed at least for JBoss AS. In the other hand, I strongly suggest you to start with a simple project that uses jBPM5 and its dependencies without any container to see how all the components work together. Once you get your process working you can start thinking about the integrations with different containers. This is the approach that I usually take to develop apps.

Cheers