WORKFLOW IN MOBILE ENVIRONMENT

WHAT IS WORKFLOW ?  WORKFLOW IS A COLLECTION OF TASKS ORGANIZED TO ACCOMPLISH SOME BUSINESS PROCESS.  EXAMPLE: Patient treatment in a hospital,banking services, manufacturing process and many other activities in today’s business life

WHAT IS WFMS ?  A key tool to improve the efficiency of an organization by automating the execution of its business process.  It supports modeling, coordinated execution and monitoring the activities that takes place within the organization.

DURING THE EXECUTION OF BUSINESS PROCESS WFMS  Act as a coordinator  Delivers various tasks to each user  Collect the results  Determine the next steps  Control the activities of each user  Detects when the process is successfully terminated

WFMS BASED ON..CLIENT –SERVER ARCHITECTURE. DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

CLIENT-SERVER ARCHITECTURE  Where the server is installed in some central computer and users access through terminals,PC’s, workstation installed in their office.  Exp: most clerical work, form processing, is done in this way.

DISTRIBUTED OPERATION  Is one of the main ways in which computers will be used in future.  Taking advantage of the arrival of more reliable and powerful laptop and home desktop computer, user within the organization can work independently of computer facilities.: application and data are loaded in the laptop or desktop by briefly connecting with a server,the connection is broken and user work locally on those application and data.  After the work has been completed which may be in a few hours or few days, user reconnect with the server and transfer their result.

Disconnected computing and WFMS have contradictory goals  WFMS is a tool for cooperative and collaborative work in which users work within a framework that guarantees progress towards a certain goal, the business process of which the user may not be aware.  This requires const monitoring and checking of the user activities. On the other hand Disconnected computing is geared towards supporting users who work in isolation from other users There is not much room for collaboration in disconnected mode.

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IS The problem of supporting disconnected clients in a large workflow management system

What should be the goal ?  To give autonomy to the clients to allow them to perform work without having to be connected to the rest of the system.  Maintain the overall correctness and consistencies of the process being executed.

TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN DISCONNECTION AND COORDINATION  User must “commit” themselves to perform certain tasks before disconnecting from the system.  WFMS takes advantage of such commitment to assign tasks to the users.  Allowing them to work on their own for ensuring correctness and constant progress towards the goal of business process.

BUSINESS PROCESS  In business process the automation involves performing several tasks  Scheduling activities  Mapping activities to users currently in the system  Tracking the progress of activities  Assigning resources to activities

WORKFLOW MODEL  Workflow process consists of  Activities--- different steps of process and associated with an invoked application and a Role – users responsible for execution of activities.  Relevant data---data being transferred among activities.  Flow of control---what to execute next depends on transition condition  Worklists--- a list of work items associated with a particular user

WORKFLOW SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE  Functionality of Workflow system is distributed among three components  1. Runtime control---persistence storage and process navigation  2. Runtime interaction---users and invoked application.  3. Buildtime

FLOWMARK’S MODEL AND ARCHITECTURE Components of Flowmark’s workflow model  Processes--- sequence of steps involved  Activities---steps to be completed  Control connector---order of execution between activities  Data connectors---flow of information from one activity to another  Input & output data container  Conditions--- when certain events will happen  Transition condition– depends on control connectors  Start condition– when an activity start  Exit condition– when an activity terminate

DETAILS ABOUT NORMAL OPERATION DIAGRAM

NORMAL OPERATION WITH CONTINIOUS CONNECTION TO THE SERVER  When an activity of process ready for execution Flowmark determine user and update the worklist and send “activity ready message” to each runtime clients.  RTC sends a “start activity message” to the server.  The server sends a “start program message” to PEC that will execute the application and a “activity running message” to RTC that result the status of activity.  PEC may request information from input data container through API calls.  PEC sends a “ program terminated message” to the server.  The server sends a “activity terminated message” to the original RTC.  Finally the activity is deleted from the worklist.

SUPPORTING DISCONNECTED CLIENTS  Process execution during disconnection  Synchronization prior to disconnection.  Disconnected operation  Reconnecting to the server

MAJOR DIFFERENCES IN DISCONNECTED OPERATION  Client work in a “batch” mode.  Both RTC and PEC are local while other component are remote.  The role of RTC instead of sending to centralized database it will send to PEC.  PEC will act according to the message received from RTC as opposed to message sent from server.  PEC must provide persistence storage because it can not connect to server to provide information.  Similarly it must persistently store the result until they can be sent to the server.

MESSAGE EXCHANGE DURING DISCONNECTED OPERATION DIAGRAM

Synchronization prior to disconnection  User locks an activity: Server is notified  User locks an activity: PEC is notified  Server begins transaction to update the database  Transaction commits: Activity is now running.  Server notifies RTC of the new state of activity.  Server sends “start program” message to PEC.  PEC request input data container for application  Server begins transaction to access data container.  Transaction commits returning the data container  Server sends data container to PEC  PEC notifies RTC that activity has been locked.

DISCONNECTED OPERATION  RTC send “lock activity” message to the server.  RTC sends “ lock activity” message to PEC.  Server begins transaction to update database.  Transaction commits. Activity is now running.  Server send “start program” message to PEC.  Message is logged in the PEC.  RTC send “start locked activity “ to PEC.  PEC starts application.  Application terminates returning results  RTC is notified that the activity has finished

Reconnecting to the server  PEC logs results of the application  RTC reconnects to the server  Server checks the worklist for the RTC  Server sends worklist to RTC  PEC reconnects to the server  Server acknowledges the reconnection  PEC sends “program terminates” message to server.  Server updates database.

CONCLUSION  In current approach business process is mapped to isolated transactions.  In reality business process transactions are related to each other.  Hence workflow is modeled with primitives : Linear, Split and Merge, Parallel, Cooperative and supportive,loop and nested loop etc.  Workflow modeled with primitives should work disconnected mode and Location awareness

References  IBM Flowmark-Managing your workflow ver 2.1 document no SH march95  IBM flowmark-Modeling workflow ver 2.1 document no sh march95  Exotica/fmdc:A workflow Management System for mobile and Disconnected clients  A hybrid Approach to model workflow in Business process  A timed workflow process model.A journal of sys and software 55(2001)

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