Generating collaborative work processes

The paper describes ways to support collaboration in business processes. Collaborative processes are different from predefined processes in the sense that they can change dynamically as the situation emerges. Such changes can be time consuming as they require users to continually adapt the system to changing contexts. The solution proposed here to support process evolution is to provide generic work objects and use software agents to assist users to dynamically change the process by quickly adding or changing work objects. The paper outlines a way of describing work processes in terms of generic work objects. The structure of the generic work objects is based on a metamodel, which provides the fundamental concepts to define generic objects. A prototype implementation is then described

A framework for integrating mobility into collaborative business processes

© 2005 IEEE. Most collaborative systems assume that users have access to workspaces through which they can access the entire collaborative context. This is often not the case with mobile users in global environments. Such users are often disconnected from their contexts and cannot contribute in the best possible way to a business. Connection to contexts is essential for users to contribute usefully in collaborative processes. This requires the mobile devices to manage complex engagements by sequences of simple interactions, which are dynamically adapted to the changes in the context. This paper describes a modeling approach for such integration and the use of software agents to manage engagements using mobile devices. It provides a framework for defining ways to integrate mobility into business processes