Personal Task Management

CHAPTER 7: Holistic Concept for End-User Driven Business

Figure 7.1: Architecture for end-user driven composition of weakly-structured process models Office Applications Task (to-do list)MailCalendar Office Applications Integration Layer

Plug Srv. Clients Mail Server

Srv. Clients External Services

Task Management Web Client Local Task Pattern Repositories Persistence Layer

Server Layer

Services

Client Layer Task Pattern Repositories

Task Management Server Task Pattern Service Repository Managers Task Patterns Explorer/Editor

Office-Integrated Task Management Client Artifact Repositories

Artifact Service Repository Managers

Local Artifact Repositories Tracking Service

Artifacts Explorer User RepositoriesTracking Repository

Evolution ExplorerTask Delegation Graph OverviewDialog Overview User Service Repository Managers

The integration layer enables the usage of email for the purposes of the task management system, by serving as a proxy and enabling email pre-formatting of outgoing emails and appropriate handling of incoming emails with task-related content. Pre-processing and post-processing of emails is common in computational email environments [Bor92, ADMG97] and has been discussed in Chapter 5.

If task management functionality is included to some extent in the office applications environment, the integration layer can use it by enabling tracking of task-related operations (e.g.

edit, create, delete). The integration layer provides also functionality to embed the user interface of the task management system in the office applications environment. Tracking and embedded support can be realized by using plug-ins into the office applications. Usage of plug-ins is proposed in related literature on evolving workflows for ensuring unobtrusive process composition support [Her00].

7.1.1.2 Office-Integrated Task Management Client

The Office-Integrated Task Management Client holds the complete presentation logic for the task management system within the selected office integration environment. The main components of the task management client are discussed in the following by referring to the requirements for end-user driven business process composition from Chapter 2.

A personal to-do list (R1) is provided in the Office-Integrated Task Management Client, which may be an extended version of the to-do list, provided by the office application environment. In Figure 7.1 this case is considered and therefore no additional to-do list is displayed in the boundaries of the Office-Integrated Task Management Client. Depending on the chosen integration environment, the to-do list functionality may need to be extended to enable hierarchical task decomposition, attachment of artifacts, and indication of task progress information and task states.

Atask pattern explorer/editor component is further provided for task pattern management.

Creation, retrieval, adaptation and search of local and global task patterns and task pattern repositories is enabled in this component. Thus, this component addresses (R4) and supports seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding (SER) [FGY+04] of weakly-structured process models (cf. Table 3.1).

Atask evolution explorer component is considered for inspecting the relationships between running ad-hoc processes and corresponding task patterns (R5) and between different task pattern variations (R6). Thus this component provides enhanced analytical capabilities on task instances and task patterns supporting task analysis in the context of SER [FGY+04].

An artifact explorer component is considered for supporting artifact management and analysis. It enables users to add externally-managed artifacts, to explore their version and history, and to explore artifact references in tasks through querying data from the server.

The functionality of the components discussed above is supported through task management service clients. These are responsible for tracking task related actions on the task management server and executing updates and queries on the remote repositories. Additional service clients can be plugged in the Office-Integrated Task Management Client to execute task-related operations on external systems e.g. to trigger transactions in a workflow or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. A simple approach for binding such external services in task instances and task patterns is through attaching executable scripts as artifacts.

The thesis suggests that through separating different functionalities related to composition of weakly-structured process models to different functional components, a gradual user involvement and thus a gentle slope of complexity [MCLM90] for end-user driven process composition can be achieved. For example, a user may wish only to organize their personal activities and may not be interested in managing or analyzing overall processes. In this case the user can manage ad-hoc tasks in their to-do list without engaging with other components. If a user wishes to save a task structure for reuse or to reuse an existing one, they need to engage with the task pattern explorer.

Users who wish to analyze best-practice evolution or to what extent a current ad-hoc process follows an initial guideline can use the task evolution explorer. Users who wish to declare externally-managed artifacts or to analyze processes based on associated documents in tasks, can use the artifact explorer. Thus a user is enabled to extend their expertise with the existing task management applications by using different components depending on their current needs. This approach is followed for all system components in the client layer.

7.1.1.3 Local, Non-Distributed Storage of Process Information

Ad-hoc task instances may hold information that a user considers confidential. This information can reside in task instances or in contained artifacts. To address such confidentiality, on the one hand enhanced authentication and authorization can be considered for tracked task instances and for artifacts and task patterns in the global repositories. On the other hand, local, non-distributed storage of process information can be enabled. To support the latter aspect the users are allowed to switch off the tracking functionality for specific task instances in order to preserve them as confidential tasks within the local workspace. If such tasks have been delegated previously in the context of a collaborative process, disabling of the tracking functionality interrupts the emerging task delegation graphs at the respective ad-hoc task instance nodes.

Local storage of task patterns is further considered to enable reuse of best-practices on personal level. In this case task patterns are stored to local task pattern repositories and reside in the local task pattern scope (cf. Section 5.2.1).

Local storage of artifacts is considered for locally-managed, non-externalized artifacts. Such artifacts are accessible only in task instances in the local to-do list and in local task patterns.

An additional aspect that is considered for storing task patterns and artifacts locally is to provide caching mechanisms for the Office-Integrated Task Management Client. The latter can store local copies of once retrieved globally-accessible task patterns and artifacts in order to avoid communication overhead for repeated retrieval. Caching raises additional issues related to the synchronization of locally cached entities with the global repositories, which are implementation specific and are not discussed in the thesis. Local repositories can be implemented differently, and can be e.g. file-system based or database based.