This application relates to electronic collaboration tools and applications. In particular, this application relates to embedding collaborative social networking components into electronic client applications.
Existing business process engines do not provide built in features that allow specifying social context for each element of a workflow definition. Integration of business applications with social platforms typically requires additional development effort for each business process and requires expertise in the social platform of choice.
Presently, organizations typically deploy process management and workflow tools to manage a process without systematic integration in the social collaboration network that support collaborative interaction within the broader set of activities engaged in by the organization's workforce. Current workflow tools typically come either without a social collaboration component, or with a special purpose collaboration tool that is closely wedded to the associated process tool. This usually results in a fractured user experience.
In addition, business process workflows are designed using standard workflow tools without integration with social collaboration platforms. Integration with social platforms is typically added on separately, and as an enhancement. As a result, workflow participants usually have to explicitly switch between existing business process tools (where the workflow activity is implemented) and collaboration tools (where work is socialized/shared/collaborated upon) to socialize and collaborate around the activity. As a result, the user adoption of social collaboration solution within an Enterprise suffers and may even result is eventual failure. A need therefore exists for a business process that embeds social collaboration features into existing business process workflows.
The system may be better understood with reference to the following drawings and description. The elements in the figures are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of the type model. In the figures, like-referenced numerals designate corresponding features throughout the different views.
The user portals 106 may take many different forms. As examples, the user portals 106 may be smart phones, laptop computers, personal data assistants, pocket computers, tablet computers, portable email devices, or processes executed in memory by a processor. The user portals 106 may be found in virtually any context, including the home, business, public spaces, or automobile. The user portals 106 may execute a software application to provide the collaboration functionality. The application executed by the user portals 106 may be augmented via software plugins that integrate collaboration functionality of the social network platform 104 into the client application. In particular, the application may include an activity feed through which a filtered set of status updates of other users may be populated to a particular user's user portal 106. The status updates may be filtered based on a variety of factors, including the location of the user, which stage of the workflow the user is performing, etc.
The system 102 facilitates status updates provided to the social networking system 104 though a user portal 106. The status updates may be, for example, automatically generated. For example, when a user begins a new stage of the workflow, the system 102 may automatically generate a status update indicating as much to other members of the user's team. The status updates may also be manually provided by the user when the user types a status update into the activity feed provided through the client application installed on the user portal 106. The system 102 may determine the context of the user's status update and augment the status update with contextual information. For example, if the system 102 has determined that the user is working on a particular piece of equipment, the system 102 may add keywords or phrases to the user's status update that identify the present stage of the workflow. In other words, the status update seen by other members of the team may include additional key terms that were not present in the user's original status update.
The dynamic workflow system 102 may include communication interfaces 110 that connect the dynamic workflow system 102 to the networks 108, system logic 112, and a user interface 114. The user interface 114 may display a graphical user interface 116. The user interface 114 facilitates setup, configuration, and monitoring of the dynamic workflow system 102.
The system logic 112 implements in hardware, software, or both, any of the processing, user interfaces, reports, and other aspects of the system shown or described below or in the Figures. As one example, the system logic 112 may include one or more processors 118 and program and data memories 120. The program and data memories 120 hold, for example, collaboration instructions 122. The data and program memories 120 may also hold collaboration configuration parameters 124 that guide the operation of the collaboration system 102, as well as a workflow database 126 that includes information about workflows, including description information about different stages of a workflow process, and different steps of each stage. The workflow database 126 may also include activity feed log data that stores past posts made by a user to the workflow activity feed on the user's device.
The processors 118 execute the collaboration instructions 122, and the configuration parameters 124 may inform the processors 118 as to how to handle the specific aspects of the collaboration processing described below and shown in the drawings. As a result, the processors 118 and collaboration instructions 122 implement the collaboration techniques described below and shown in the Figures. The system 102 may accept input from the user interface 114 to change, view, add, or delete any of the configuration parameters 124 at any time.
The social networking system 104 may be Jive®, Tibbr®, Moxie®, Chatter®, Yammer®, Newsgator® or other social network/micro-blogging systems. The social networking system 104 generates updates based on the received event information and pushes the updates back to the dynamic workflow system 102. When the dynamic workflow system 102 receives updates, it populates collaboration interfaces 126. While the collaboration interfaces 126 may appear on the GUI 116, the dynamic workflow system 102 may also push the collaboration interfaces 126 (or updates thereto) to the user portals 106 over the networks 108. The dynamic workflow system 102 may populate multiple collaboration interfaces, each corresponding to a different user or user portal 106. For example, if an expert or other user completes a task or edits a document, the dynamic workflow system 102 may send updates to the collaboration interfaces of other users that are part of the user's project team or collaboration group.
The dynamic workflow system 102 may communicate with social networking system 104 through a communications network 108. The communications network 108 may be any private or public communications network or combination of networks. The communications network 108 connects devices, such as the user portals 106, servers, systems, databases, or other network enabled devices, to other such devices, and thereby supports data communication between the connected devices. The communications network 108 may generally be enabled to employ any form of computer-readable media for communicating information from one computing device to another. The communications network 108 may include one or more of a wireless network, a wired network, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a direct connection such as through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, and the like, and may include the set of interconnected networks that make up the Internet. The communications network 108 may execute any communication method by which information may travel between computing devices.
The user portals 106 may access the dynamic workflow system 102 via the communications network 110, for example, using a browser application. A browser based implementation allows system features to be accessible regardless of the underlying platform of the user portals 106. For example, the user portals 106 may each be a desktop, laptop, handheld computer, cell phone, mobile messaging device, network enabled television, digital video recorder, automobile, or other network enabled user portal, which may use a variety of hardware and/or software packages. The user portals 106 may also connect to the dynamic workflow system 102 and social network system 104 using a stand-alone application which may be platform-dependent or platform-independent.
The dynamic workflow system 102 may be implemented in many different ways. For example, although some features may be shown or described as stored in computer-readable memories (e.g., as logic implemented as computer-executable instructions or as data structures in memory), all or part of the dynamic workflow system 102 and its logic and data structures may be stored on, distributed across, or read from other machine-readable media. The media may include hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, a signal, such as a signal received from a network or received over multiple packets communicated across the network.
The dynamic workflow system 102 may be implemented with additional, different, or fewer components. As one example, a processor may be implemented as a microprocessor, a microcontroller, a DSP, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), discrete logic, or a combination of other types of circuits or logic. As another example, memories may be DRAM, SRAM, Flash or any other type of memory. The processing capability of the dynamic workflow system 102 may be distributed among multiple components, such as among multiple processors and memories, optionally including multiple distributed processing systems. Parameters, databases, and other data structures may be separately stored and managed, may be incorporated into a single memory or database, may be logically and physically organized in many different ways, and may implemented with different types of data structures such as linked lists, hash tables, or implicit storage mechanisms. Logic, such as programs or circuitry, may be combined or split among multiple programs, distributed across several memories and processors, and may be implemented in a library, such as a shared library (e.g., a dynamic link library (DLL)). The DLL, for example, may store code that performs the collaboration processing described in this document and shown in the Figures.
The dynamic workflow system 102 disclosed herein more efficiently gathers the best thinking applied to projects and problems from anywhere within the group or enterprise, thus reducing or eliminating latent capacity and under-leveraged expertise within most organizations, as well as reducing computing resources required to provide solutions to problems that have already been addressed or answered by others within the group or enterprise.
In addition, while
Once the system 102 identifies the workflow, the system 102 transmits workflow data to the workflow application running on the engineer's device. The workflow application, under control by the processor of the engineer's mobile device, then populates the workflow overview information to the workflow overview section 304 and stage/step description data to the stage/step description section 306. The workflow overview information may include an identification of the workflow and an outline of the stages and steps of the workflow process. In
The stage/step description data may include information related to a particular stage of the workflow process, as well as a particular step of the stage, such as diagrams of the component that is the subject of the workflow process, instructions for performing the step, and best practices submitted by other team members that have previously performed the step. The stage/step description section 306 also includes a button 308 that the engineer may select when he/she has completed a particular step. When the engineer has indicated that he/she has completed a step, the application may automatically look up in the workflow database the stage/step description data corresponding to the subsequent stage/step in the workflow process and provide that data to the application. In other words, when the engineer indicates that he/she has completed a step, the stage/step description section 306 will automatically change to show stage/step description data corresponding to the next stage/step in the workflow process.
Through the workflow feeds section 302 the engineer may post comments, and view comments posted by others. The comments posted by the engineer and others are filtered for each user. In other words, if one user posts a comment to his or her workflow feed, that comment may be sent to less than all of the user's team members. The criteria the system 102 may use to filter user comments may include in which step or stage of the workflow process the user is engaged. For example, referring to
The system 102 also stores comments made by the users of the application. The system 102 not only filters comments made by users as those comments are made, but filters past comments to identify relevant past comments that should be populated to the user's workflow feed. For example, if a first engineer working on step 4 of the “Safety” stage submits a comment on the instructions associated with that step, the system 102 may determine that this comment is not relevant to a second engineer that is working on step 1 of the “Safety” stage and not populate the comment of the first engineer to the workflow feed on the device being used by the second engineer. However, at a later time when the second engineer reaches step 4 of the “Safety” stage, the system 102 may determine that the past comment by the first engineer is now relevant and populate that past comment to the workflow feed corresponding to the second engineer. In this manner, as the engineer proceeds from one step of a stage to another, or from one stage of the workflow to another, the set of comments in the workflow feed section 302 is dynamically changing based on what the engineer is working on, where the engineer is, as well as on other contextual information.
The system 102 also automatically augments comments made by engineers with additional information before those comments are populated to the workflow feeds of other engineers. For example, because the system 102 knows in which stage and step of the workflow the engineer is engaged, the system 102 may insert keywords into comments made by the engineers. For example,
The user device described above may be any device that can be a user interface to accept user input and display the output of the workflow process. For example, the user device may be a portable device such as a tablet or a mobile terminal. Or as an alternatively, the user device may be a PC or any other general device or customized equipment. There may be multiple user devices. For example, one user device may be used to identify the issue in the present disclosed system and a second user device may be used to display the result such as selected activity feed to the users.
Based on the user data, the system 102 identifies a workflow process the user is engaged in (404). The system 102 may query a workflow database that includes information about a plurality of different workflow process. Each workflow process may have associated with it an identification of the stages of the workflow process, and of the steps with in each stage. The workflow database may include the stage/step description data discussed above.
The system 102 filters previously submitted activity feed posts made by members of the user's team (406). The workflow database may also include log data corresponding to the previously submitted posts. The system 102 filters the log data to identify previous posts that are relevant to the workflow process, stage, and/or step identified in Step 404. For example, a prior activity feed post submitted by a team member during the past week may be relevant to the stage of the workflow process the user is current engaged in. The system 102 identifies such activity feed posts, which will be displayed to the user's activity feed, such as the workflow feed shown in
The system 102 transmits the filtered activity feed posts, as well as information about the workflow process, stage of the workflow process, and/or steps of the stage to the workflow collaboration application running on the user's device (408). The application displays information related to the current workflow process, stages and step on the user's device, as illustrated in
The system 102 also receives new activity feed posts entered by the user in an activity feed (410) of the workflow collaboration application, such as the workflow feed section shown in
The system 102 applies filters to the post to determine which other members of the user's team should see the user's post, and when (414). For example, the system 102 may determine that the post should be viewed only by other team members engaged in the same stage of the same workflow process, or in the same step of the same stage. As another example, the system 102 may determine that the post should be viewed only by other team members located at the same location as the user. As a further example, the system 102 may determine that the post should be viewed only buy other team members engaged in a preceding or subsequent step of the same stage. In this example, and referring to
The system 102 determines whether the user has transitioned to a new step of the current stage, to a new stage of the current workflow process, or to a new workflow process (416). The system 102 may receive user input indicating that a step is complete, such as if the user selects the step completion button 308 shown in
The application receives a work order selection from the user (504), such as when the user selects one of the work orders in the work order list 602. The application then displays a selected work order interface that provides information about the selected work order (506).
The application receives a step selection input from the user (508), whereby the user selects one of the steps to be performed. The application then obtains detailed information about the selected step, as well as activity feed posts filtered based on the selected step (510). The application may query a workflow database for the information about the selected step. The workflow database may be a remote database, or may be stored in the memory of the user's device.
The application displays the detailed information and filtered activity feed posts corresponding to the selected step (512).
The application receives one or more posts submitted by the user in the workflow feed section 804 (514). The application sends received posts to a remote server (516) that augments the posts with additional information and then filters the posts received from the user, as well as from other users, to determine which posts should be sent to which users. The application receives filtered posts from the remote server (518), and populates the workflow feed with the filtered posts (520). When the user completes the steps of the stage of the workflow process, the application may automatically transition to the next stage of the process, or may return the user to the work order list interface 600.
While various embodiments of the invention have been described, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that many more embodiments and implementations are possible within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the invention is not to be restricted except in light of the attached claims and their equivalents.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/838,420, filed Jun. 24, 2013, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61838420 | Jun 2013 | US |