Coordination and tracking of workflows

• US 20070156632A1
• Filed: 12/29/2005
• Published: 07/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Piersol, Kurt, Wolff, Gregory
• Granted Patent: US 7,849,053 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for coordinating and/or tracking workflows are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises performing a workflow having a series of two or more processing operations and, for each of the two or more processing operations, calculating an identifier and adding at least one metadata entry corresponding to said each of the two or more processing operations to a set of metadata entries corresponding to a digital object.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

performing a workflow having a series of two or more processing operations; and

for each of the two or more processing operations,

calculating an identifier, and

adding at least one metadata entry corresponding to said each of the two or more processing operations to a set of metadata entries corresponding to a digital object.

2. The method defined in claim 1 wherein calculating the identifier based on data being input into said each processing operation.

3. The method defined in claim 1 wherein calculating the identifier based on data being output from said each processing operation

4. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising inserting one or more check points in the workflow, which when executed cause the addition of metadata entries corresponding to each of the two or more processing operations.

5. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising:

aggregating entries from two separate processing units and assigning sequence numbers to those entries.

6. The method defined in claim 5 wherein the entries are aggregated using the identifiers.

7. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising calculating two identifiers and making entries in the log associated with each identifier that references the other identifier.

8. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the at least one metadata entry comprises a document log entry.

9. The method defined in claim 1 wherein each identifier is based on content of said each metadata entry.

10. The method defined in claim 9 wherein the identifier is a hash value.

11. The method defined in claim 9 wherein the identifier is a result of applying a hashing function to an electronic form of the content.

12. The method defined in claim 11 wherein the hashing function is the MD5 hashing algorithm.

13. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the set is stored separately from the digital object.

14. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the set is in XML format.

15. The method defined in claim 14 wherein each entry in the set is an XML segment.

16. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the set comprises a document log.

17. The method defined in claim 16 wherein the document log is identified using a document identifier.

18. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the digital object comprises a plurality of bytes.

19. The method defined in claim 1 wherein the digital object comprises a document.

20. An article of manufacture having one ore more recordable media having instructions thereon which, when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method comprising:

performing a workflow having a series of two or more processing operations; and

for each of the two or more processing operations,

calculating an identifier, and

adding at least one metadata entry corresponding to said each of the two or more processing operations to a set of metadata entries corresponding to a digital object.

21. A method comprising:

analyzing metadata entries in a set corresponding to a digital object;

detecting a workflow based on analysis of the metadata entries; and

performing one or more operations in response to detecting the workflow.

22. The method defined in claim 21 further comprising identifying one or more patterns in logs entries and wherein detecting the workflow is based on patterns identified when analyzing the log data.

23. The method defined in claim 22 wherein the one or more patterns comprise a set of words associated with the workflow in the log data.

24. The method defined in claim 22 wherein the one or more patterns comprise a set of words in an order associated with the workflow in the log data, wherein the set of words being in the order is indicative of the workflow.

25. The method defined in claim 21 wherein detecting the workflow based on analysis of the log data comprises identifying an occurrence of one or more words associated with the workflow in the log data.

26. The method defined in claim 21 wherein analyzing data in log comprises pattern matching to identify the workflow.

27. The method defined in claim 21 further comprising analyzing data in a log for a different document and detecting the workflow based on patterns that repeat across different documents.

28. The method defined in claim 21 further comprising accessing each of the metadata entries with an identifier based on content of said each metadata entry.

29. The method defined in claim 28 wherein the identifier is a hash value.

30. The method defined in claim 28 wherein the identifier is a result of applying a hashing function to an electronic form of the content.

31. The method defined in claim 21 further comprising:

accessing an electronic form of a digital object;

computing an identifier based on content of the electronic form of the digital object; and

retrieving log entries for a document log associated with the document.

32. The method defined in claim 31 wherein computing the document identifier comprises applying a hashing function to the content of the electronic form of the document.

33. An article of manufacture having one or more recordable media having instructions thereon which, when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method comprising:

analyzing metadata entries in a set corresponding to a digital object;

detecting a workflow based on analysis of the metadata entries; and

performing one or more operations in response to detecting the workflow.