Apparatus and method for collecting and displaying information in a workflow system

• US 20050093881A1
• Filed: 12/14/2004
• Published: 05/05/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/24/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alvaria Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Aspect Communications Corporation (Alvaria Incorporated)
• Inventors: Chan, Alex Ylu-Man, Poon, Stanley Ka-Hung, Okita, Glen Kazumi, Thomas, Binu
• Granted Patent: US 7,535,479 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/589
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A method and apparatus for extensible real-time workflows are described. The present invention allows a user of a transaction processing system, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or an automatic call distribution (ACD), for example, to easily add new event sources without recompiling the core workflow server engine of the transaction processing system. The invention also supports features such as the adding of new services, the exchange of events and parameters with other systems, real-time collection and display of workflow statistical information, the use of a centralized configuration database, incremental loading and unloading of workflows and rules, and exception handling.

Claims

1-23. -23. (canceled)

24. A method of displaying information relating to a workflow driven by a computer system comprising:

executing the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system;

displaying a workflow diagram as a tree with vertices on a display screen associated with the computer system; and

overlaying the execution statistics on the workflow diagram, wherein the execution statistics are for various steps displayed in the workflow diagram.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the overlayed execution statistics indicates the number of times a certain step was executed.

26. The method of claim 24, further comprising:

selectively overlaying the execution statistics on the workflow diagram.

27. The method of claim 24;

further comprising color coding the execution statistics.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the execution statistics are color coded based on threshold values.

29. A workflow system comprising:

a workflow server engine to execute workflows, the workflows implementing business rules;

a display device to display workflow diagrams, wherein the workflow diagrams are depicted as trees having a plurality of vertices; and

an overlay data provider to provide calculated execution statistics relating to an executing workflow to overlay on the workflow diagram displayed on the display device.

30. The workflow system of claim 29, wherein the display device is a workflow editor.

31. A method of collecting information relating to a workflow driven by a computer system:

comprising;

executing the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system;

displaying a workflow diagram of the workflow being executed on a display screen associated with the computer system; and

overlaying the execution statistics on the workflow diagram, and wherein the workflow diagram is at least partially represented as a tree having vertices.

32. The method of claim 31 further comprising displaying the collected information on the display screen.

33. The method of claim 31, wherein the execution statistics includes the number of times a step in the workflow is executed.

34. The method of claim 31, wherein execution statistics includes the execution time of one or more steps.

35. The method of claim 31, wherein the execution statistics includes the number of exceptions encountered during execution of the workflow.

36. The method of claim 31, wherein the execution statistics are displayed as a raw number.

37. The method of claim 31, wherein the execution statistics are displayed as a percentage.

38. A method of collecting information relating to a workflow driven by a computer system comprising:

executing the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system, wherein the execution statistics includes the number of times a step in the workflow is executed; and

displaying the execution statistics and a workflow diagram on a display screen associated with the computer system, wherein the workflow diagram is depicted as a plurality of connected vertices.

39. The method of claim 38, wherein displaying further includes overlaying within the display screen the execution statistics on the vertices.

40. The method of claim 38, wherein displaying further includes presenting selective colors for each different type of execution statistic within the display screen.

41. The method of claim 38, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen a number for each vertices indicating how frequently each vertices was executed.

42. The method of claim 38, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen an execution time associated with the elapsed execution time of each vertices.

43. The method of claim 38, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen the execution statistics as at least one of raw number values and percentage values.