Collaborative workflow control

A method, comprising:

• establishing a web socket connection with a collaboration manager;
• loading tasks of a job checked out for a workflow of a workflow system by the collaboration manager within a user-facing interface screen;
• receiving a user selection made by a user from the user-facing interface screen for a select one of the tasks;
• loading task details for the select one of the tasks into viewing and editing fields of the user-facing interface screen based on the user selection;
• sending a lock task message for the select one of the tasks to the collaboration manager over the web socket connection;
• and
• reporting changes made by the user to the task details in the viewing and editing fields to the collaboration manager over the web socket connection.

A system, comprising:

• a server comprising a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having executable instructions;
• client devices, each client device comprising a device processor and a device non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having device executable instructions;
• each set of device executable instructions when executed by the corresponding device processor from the corresponding device non-transitory computer-readable storage medium cause the corresponding device processor to perform first operations comprising:
• establishing a web socket connection with the executable instructions of the server;
• rendering an instance of an interface for performing actions on tasks of a job associated with a workflow of a workflow system;
• maintaining identifiers for the job, the tasks of the job, task details for the tasks, and interface options for the instance of the interface as an in-memory Document Object Module (DOM) object;
• reporting changes in the DOM object in real time over the web socket connection to the executable instructions of the server;
• and
• updating available interface options for the instance of the interface and task details for the tasks based on real-time messages broadcasted by the executable instructions of the server over the web socket connection;
• the executable instructions when executed by the processor of the server from the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
• providing backend access to the workflow of the workflow system through the instances of the interface;
• maintaining each web socket connection with the corresponding instance of the interface;
• maintaining a list of user identifiers associated with users of the instances of the interface based on a job identifier associated with the job;
• and
• broadcasting the changes received from the corresponding device executable instructions as the real-time messages over the web socket connections using the list.