Enterprise workflow architecture

Workflow builders are designed to facilitate development of automated processes and support flexible applications that can be updated, enhanced or completely revamped. The Hewlett-Packard WorkManager is an open product data management solution with workflow management capabilities. WorkManager supports the entire product lifecycle by providing a single, logical repository for all data, and it manages and tracks enterprise-wide processes. With a strong information management platform at its core, WorkManager provides central administration capabilities, including supervision and intervention, where necessary. Because enterprise data is usually fragmented and stored in a variety of legacy systems, and different organizations have different amount of control over their data, an enterprise workflow system needs to support processes accessing data from different sites and applications. This paper describes the architecture of distributed workflow, Hewlett-Packard's solution to the enterprise workflow problem. The architecture is an extension of the existing WorkManager architecture. Its development is based on user requirements and four high-level user models. The user models and the architecture are described.<>