US 6,725,428 B1 · Systems and methods providing flexible representations of work

Abstract

Workflow techniques for coordinating organizational processes by providing flexible representations of work using generalized process structure grammars (GPSG). The techniques take into account that, in reality, work evolves both horizontally, in the co-operation of causally unrelated, but information-sharing tasks, and vertically, in the co-ordination of causally-dependent activities. Process modeling involves (1) viewing documents and tasks as duals of each other, capturing horizontal co-operation; and (2) exploiting constraints to express the soft dependencies among related activities and documents within the framework of generative rule-based grammars for processes, thus handling vertical co-ordination. This alleviates or avoids rigidity arising in conventional workflow solutions in part from viewing work processes as unfolding along a single line of temporally chained activities.

Claims15

Dependent claims

A method for generating a representation of a work process in a memory of a data processing system, comprising the steps of:

receiving a first user input and a second user input;
the first user input indicating a first object and a second object;
the first object and the second object each having a set of features;
the first object specifying an activity for creating a document;
the second object specifying a state of the document for initiating the activity;
the second user input indicating a plurality of rules for defining a relationship between the first object and the second object;
the plurality of rules including a constraint to be satisfied by a feature of the first object and a feature of the second object in a manner that specifies the activity and the document are duals of each other;
and
compiling, in the memory, a grammar representing the work process;
said compiling step generating the grammar from the plurality of rules indicated by the second user input.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Systems and methods providing flexible representations of work

Life of this patent

Systems and methods providing flexible representations of work

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims15