User-Creatable Custom Workflows

• US 20140337863A1
• Filed: 05/10/2013
• Published: 11/13/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/10/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Rusu, Ionut Adrian
• Granted Patent: US 9,262,239 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/318
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/103 Workflow collaboration or project management

Abstract

This document describes techniques enabling users to customize their applications through workflows. In contrast to often-simplistic rules, these user-selectable workflows can be arbitrary and nearly limitless in number and complexity. Further, these workflows do not require that an application designer build them by adding or altering code of the application. The techniques enable users to create workflows by connecting exposed events and exposed actions of an application. These connections, referred to as “synapses,” are used by the techniques to build workflows, thereby permitting users to customize the application.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving selection of an exposed event, the exposed event internal to an application;

receiving selection of an exposed action, the exposed action internal to the application;

creating a synapse connecting the selected event to the selected action; and

building a workflow using the synapse, the workflow configured to cause the application to perform the selected action responsive to the selected event.

2. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, wherein the selected action is a specific activity that is executed by the application if the event occurs.

3. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, wherein the selected event is a specific activity performed by the application.

4. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, further comprising receiving selection of an event filter, the event filter a condition for the selected action to be executed, and wherein building the workflow configures the workflow to cause the application to perform the selected action responsive to the condition being satisfied.

5. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, further comprising receiving selection of an action parameter, the action parameter mapped to a static or varying value, and wherein building the workflow configures the workflow to cause the application to perform the selected action including the static or varying value.

6. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, further comprising receiving selection of an event context and an action context, the event context and the action context selected from multiple functional software entities.

7. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, further comprising:

receiving selection of another exposed event internal to the application, the exposed event capable of being caused by the selected action;

receiving selection of another exposed action internal to the application; and

creating another synapse connecting the selected other event and the selected other action, and

wherein building the workflow also uses the other synapse, the workflow configured to cause the application to perform the selected action responsive to the selected event and then, after the selected action, perform the other selected action responsive to the other selected event caused by the selected action.

8. A computer-implemented method as described in claim 1, wherein the workflow is built using a liquid markup language.

9. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media comprising computer-readable instructions that, responsive to execution by one or more processors, perform operations comprising:

exposing, in a user interface, selectable;

event contexts;

events;

event filters;

action contexts;

actions; and

action parameters; and

building a workflow based on selections received through the user interface, the workflow configured to cause, responsive to a selected event occurring within a selected event context and with a selected event filter satisfied, a selected action, the selected action performed within a selected action context and according to a selected action parameter.

10. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein the exposing presents a graphically selectable list of the event contexts, the events, the event filters, the action contexts, the actions, or the action parameters.

11. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein the events exposed are tailored to the selected event context.

12. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 9, wherein exposing the event contexts and the action contexts present functional software entities internal to a single application.

13. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media comprising computer-readable instructions that, responsive to execution by one or more processors, perform operations comprising:

receiving a history including an activity log of a user'"'"'s interactions with, and operations performed by, functional software entities;

determining, based on the history, synapses correlating events and actions, the correlated events and actions determined from the operations performed by the functional software entities;

enabling selection of one of the synapses; and

responsive to selection of one of the synapses, building a workflow, the workflow configured to cause one of the functional software entities to perform the correlated action of the selected synapse responsive to occurrence of the correlated event of the selected synapse.

14. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein the correlated event is one of the operations performed by one of the functional software entities without interaction by the user and the correlated action is one of the operations performed by the one or another of the functional software entities, the correlated action caused by interaction with the user.

15. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein the history includes timing of the operations and the interactions and determining synapses is based at least in part on amounts of time between the operations performed by the functional software entities and the interactions with the functional software entities by the user.

16. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein receiving the history includes scanning the activity log of the user and determining synapses includes finding patterns of activities in the activity log and correlating sequential operations in the found patterns.

17. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein enabling selection of the one or more synapses includes presenting, in a user interface, selectable events and actions.

18. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein determining the synapses determines, based on the history, action parameters to include with the correlated action.

19. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein determining the synapses determines, based on the history, an event filter that is a condition to the correlated action.

20. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media according to claim 13, wherein the functional software entities are separate applications.