System and method for state machine management

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising a plurality of machine-readable instructions which when executed by one or more processors associated with a server cause the processors to perform a method comprising:

• loading an instance of a state machine, the state machine comprising a plurality of states, one or more state transitions between respective pairs of the states, and one or more tasks for each of the one or more state transitions, each of the one or more tasks representing a precondition before a corresponding state transition may occur and being identified by a respective combination of a task identifier and a task version;
• identifying a current state from among the plurality of states of the instance of the state machine;
• providing, to an agent, a status of a first task associated with an outgoing state transition from the current state, the task being identified by a first task identifier and a first task version;
• receiving, from the agent, an update made to the status of the first task by the agent;
• and
• recording the update to the status of the first task as a first task event, the first task event recording the first task identifier, the first task version, a first time stamp of when the update occurred, and an identifier of the agent.

A computing system comprising:

• a memory for storing a state machine repository storing:
• one or more state machine objects describing structures of a state machine, the structures including a plurality of states, one or more state transitions between respective pairs of the states, and one or more tasks for each of the one or more state transitions, each of the one or more tasks representing a precondition before a corresponding state transition may occur and being identified by a respective combination of a task identifier and a task version;
• and
• one or more task events describing respective updates to one of the one or more tasks, each of the one or more tasks including a respective task identifier, a respective task version, a respective time stamp of when a corresponding update occurred, and an identifier of a respective agent responsible for the corresponding update;
• and
• one or more processors coupled to the memory, the one or more processors configured to execute instructions to cause the computing system to:
• load an instance of a state machine;
• identify a current state from among the plurality of states of the instance of the state machine;
• provide, to an agent, a status of a first task associated with an outgoing state transition from the current state, the task being identified by a first task identifier and a first task version;
• receive, from the agent, an update made to the status of the first task by the agent;
• and
• record the update to the status of the first task as a first task event in the memory, the first task event recording the first task identifier, the first task version, a first time stamp of when the update occurred, and an identifier of the agent.