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

• US 7,535,479 B2
• Filed: 12/14/2004
• Issued: 05/19/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/24/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Alvaria Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Aspect Software Incorporated
• Inventors: Poon, Stanley Ka-Hung, Okita, Glen Kazumi, Chan, Alex Yiu-Man, Thomas, Binu
• Primary Examiner(s): Bella; Matthew C
• Assistant Examiner(s): Cunningham; Gregory F
• Application Number:
  US11/012,391
• Publication Number:
  US 20050093881A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,617 Days
• Field of Search: 340/7.29, 345/629, 345/630, 345/734, 345/736, 345/763, 345/764, 345/965, 345/967, 345/968, 345/969, 379/221.09, 379/265.02, 37926503-26514, 379/266.09, 379/266.04, 705/9, 705/102
• US Class Current: 345/629
• 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. A method of displaying information relating to a workflow driven by a computer system comprising:

executing the workflow made up of a sequence of a plurality of steps that are performed to process a transaction and collecting run-time execution data about the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating run-time execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system using the run-time execution data;

displaying a workflow diagram of the workflow as a tree with vertices representing each of the steps in the sequence connected to each other to symbolically depict the business rules and how the rules handle events on a display screen associated with the computer system;

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

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the overlayed run-time execution statistics are displayed with an associated branch of the tree.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the execution statistics on the workflow diagram include an execution count for each output connection point of a step and a count of the number of times a step in the workflow is executed.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising execution statistics associated with a branch of the tree when a pointing device is situated over the branch.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the execution statistics are color coded based on threshold values.

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

executing the workflow made up of a sequence of steps that are performed to process a transaction and collecting run-time execution data about the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system using the run-time execution data;

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 representing each of the steps in the sequence connected to each other with edges to symbolically depict the business rules and how the rules handle events.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprising obtaining metrics to calculate the execution statistics from a database query in response to an identifier associated with the workflow.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the execution statistics includes the number of times a step in the workflow is executed.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein execution statistics includes the execution time of one or more steps.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the execution statistics includes the number of exceptions encountered during execution of the workflow.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein the execution statistics are color coded based on threshold values.

12. The method of claim 6, wherein execution statistics are displayed over a branch of the tree when a pointing device is situated over the branch.

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

executing the workflow made up of a sequence of steps that are performed to process a transaction in real-time using a workflow engine and selecting independent of the workflow engine run-time execution data about the workflow, the workflow implementing business rules;

calculating run-time execution statistics relating to the execution of the workflow on the computer system using the run-time execution data, wherein the run-time 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 representing each of the steps in the sequence connected to each other with edges to symbolically depict the business rules and how the rules should handle events.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying further includes overlaying within the display screen the execution statistics on the vertices.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying further includes presenting selective colors for each different type of execution statistic within the display screen.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen a number for each vertices indicating how frequently each vertices was executed.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen an execution time associated with the elapsed execution time of each vertices.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein displaying further includes presenting within the display screen the execution statistics as at least one of raw number values and percentage values.

19. A system, comprising:

a workflow engine implementing business rules and executing a workflow made up of a sequence of steps that are performed to process a transaction;

an overlay data provider which acquires run-time execution data about the workflow and calculates run-time execution statistics for the executing workflow;

a workflow editor which presents a diagram having vertices representing each of the steps in the sequence connected to each other with edges to symbolically depict the business rules and how the rules handle the events on a display in connection with the executing workflow and simultaneously presents the run-time execution statistics in connection with the vertices on the display.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein presenting the diagram further includes presenting the diagram and its vertices as a tree diagram having a root and leaves, wherein the root and each of the leaves represent one of the vertices.

21. The system of claim 19, wherein simultaneously presenting the execution statistics further includes displaying at least one of a percentage of times the workflow executed a step and an execution count for each output connection point of a step of the workflow.