Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-16
2001-10-23
Hafiz, Tariq R. (Department: 2163)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C709S226000, C709S241000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06308163
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The invention relates generally to workflow process management and more particularly to automating the coordination of process activities in order to accomplish tasks of an enterprise.
BACKGROUND ART
Workflow process management is a technology that provides the ability to define and automate the flow of work through an enterprise in order to accomplish business tasks. The business tasks may be first modeled as workflow processes, which are then automated by workflow management systems (WFMSs). Commercially available WFMSs, such as the Hewlett-Packard Changengine, are capable of supporting a large number of workflow processes in an efficient, reliable and secure manner.
A “workflow process” is a coordinated set of process activities that are connected in order to achieve a common business goal. Thus, a workflow process is typically a sequence of process activities. A “process activity” is a logical step or description of a piece of work that contributes to the accomplishment of the workflow process. A process activity can be executed manually or automatically. Each process activity is related to a work item and a workflow participant. A “work item” defines the work that is to be processed in the context of the related process activity and is performed by one or more workflow participants. A “workflow participant” is either a person that performs the work item for a manual process activity or a computer-based application that performs a work item for an automated process activity. “Resources” are defined as workflow participants and the objects that they utilize in performing work items.
A workflow participant can usually perform work items for more than one process activity. In the reverse, work items can generally be performed by more than one resident workflow participant. A workflow participant often requires use of or access to other resources when performing a work item. For example, a person that prints a document requires use of a printer. Workflow participants together with the objects that are used by the workflow participants are external resources for a WFMS.
One of the important features of modern WFMSs is the realization of dynamic resource allocation, which provides resource independence to business processes. Thus, a workflow process does not need to be modified when underlying resources change. Moreover, resources are more efficiently utilized. A modern WFMS includes a resource manager, which allows run time resource allocation. The resource manager provides a resource model for process designers to use for resource specification at process definition time. The model is an abstraction of the physical resources and shields the process designers from the detailed specification of the required resources. The resource manager also manages workflow resources (e.g., keeps track of status of resources) and assigns workflow resources to business steps (i.e., process activities) when requested to do so by a workflow execution engine.
One problem with resource management in WFMSs relates to efficiently assigning resources to process activities at process execution times when there are a number of workflow processes being executed simultaneously. Workflow resource management is concerned with: (1) keeping track of resource status (e.g., availability and load) and (2) finding eligible, available, and hopefully least loaded resources for workflow activities when needed. The resource management problem is not trivial in many workflow environments, since workflow resources are distributed, the number of work-flow resources are large, and resource status changes frequently.
Traditional approaches to workflow resource management have been to either manage distributed resources globally at a central site or to manage the distributed resources locally. Under the global management approach, the distributed resources are under control of a global resource manager (GRM). The resources are registered to the GRM, with an identification of the roles that the individual resources can assume. The GRM is responsible for keeping track of the status of each of the registered resources. The main advantage of the global management approach is that resource assignment is relatively easy and efficient, since all resource information is contained at a single site. However, this approach incurs huge overhead in keeping track of status of remote resources. The approach is impractical in many real workflow environments for a number of reasons. First, the number of remote resources can be large. For example, in the workflow process of providing employee expense reimbursement, a large corporation may have more than 10,000 employees as workflow resources. It is extremely difficult for the GRM to keep track of load information about remote resources, since the information changes frequently. Second, resources of a large enterprise usually belong to different organizations. Workflow resources at different organizations and locations are often managed by different systems independently. These external resource systems can be heterogeneous with respect to resource models, query language and communication protocol. Third, process designers need different views of workflow resources at different levels. Most business processes only involve local resources. On the other hand, there are cases in which an enterprise-wide view of all workflow resources is needed.
In the local management approach, resources are managed by multiple, distributed local resource managers (LRMs). Each LRM has all status information regarding resources and has full control over resources at its site. The approach may include utilizing a GRM at a central site to maintain role information for all the resources and their managing LRM, but resource management system relies on individual LRMs for resource assignment when a work item is to be performed. The local resource management approach avoids the huge overhead of keeping track of dynamic changes of resources by managing them locally. However, this approach makes run-time resource assignment difficult and sometimes inefficient.
A system that overcomes some of the problems of the two traditional approaches is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,239 to Du et al., which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The system provides distributed resource management in a computer network that includes multiple computers operating under control of a WFMS which manages available resources to carry out a workflow process. Resources are grouped according to shared sets of capabilities. Each resource group includes at least one resource. One or more computers in the network stores a GRM and data to define the resource capability of at least some of the groups, and further stores the resource status for each group for which it has the data relating to resource capability. Preferably, each computer that does not store a GRM stores an LRM for at least one of the groups and includes data that defines the capability and the status for each resource in each group to which it is assigned. Thus, instead of doing resource management in one step, either at a central site (in the global management approach) or at remote sites (in the local management approach), the approach of Du et al. first checks the availability of resource groups at a central site and then selects (at remote sites) specific resources from the group.
FIG. 1
is a schematic view of a simplified workflow process. A workflow process is a description of sequencing, timing, dependency, data, physical agent location, and business rule and authorization policy enforcement requirements of business activities needed to enact work. An upper portion
10
of
FIG. 1
represents the activities that are required to implement the workflow process, while the lower portion
12
represents the resources for executing the activities. The example is one in which a claim for payment is processed. In a first step
14
, the claim is submitted. The enterprise that is represented in this example utilizes an employee
15
to receive the c
Davis James W.
Du Weimin
Shan Ming-Chien
Hafiz Tariq R.
Hewlett--Packard Company
Robertson Dave
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