Getting Status of a External Task

Hi,

I would like to know on how to get the status of a task & then based on that I would like to pass the values to the next job as a value.

Example :

Task1 -- Run for 2 hours

Task2 - Check on task1, if complete - Then a message is sent saying task1 is complete.
If  Failed - Send a msg as "failed".
if Running(also get run time) - send a message as  task1 has been running for " 3hours".


Thanks