Supporting interactive workflow systems through graphical web interfaces and interactive simulators

The design of workflow systems originated as an attempt to support coordinated data access. The improvement of interaction technology has created an opportunity for more flexible and interactive activities. Tools for modelling tasks in cooperative applications have started to appear. In this paper, we show how to extend one such tool for supporting workflow control in distributed environments through interactive graphical interfaces. In particular, we show how we have created an environment that exploits a workflow server containing a simulator of cooperative task models. This enables the possibility of allowing users with different roles to access the system through interactive graphical Web interfaces obtained using SVG. Users can access from any location where a Web access is available and obtain information regarding the state of a specific workflow instance, their enabled tasks according to the current state, the active tasks (high level tasks started but not yet finished), and the history of tasks accomplished with details regarding their performance. Whenever a task is performed, the user can inform the system regarding this, and the workflow system will update the state of the procedure and enable or disable the tasks for all the roles involved accordingly.