System and method for creating and managing encapsulated workflow packages

Abstract

One example of the system and method described herein may be used to create and manage encapsulated workflow packages, which may include package identifiers specified with a universal endpoint address schema that can be used to route documents and manage document workflows. In particular, the encapsulated workflow packages may embed, among other things, full on-ramping requirements associated with documents captured therein, including any necessary workflow steps applicable to devices, entities, or other receiving destinations that may participate in on-ramping data further embedded therein. Accordingly, the encapsulated workflow packages may embed native business intelligence that can control governance, risk, and compliance across organizational boundaries.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims priority to (1) U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 648,957, filed May 18, 2012, and (2) U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 648,949, filed May 18, 2012, each of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. This application is also related to another U.S. Patent Application Attorney Docket No. Tehranchi-3, filed on an even date herewith, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The invention generally relates to a system and method for creating and managing encapsulated workflow packages, which may include package identifiers specified with a universal endpoint address schema that can be used to route documents and manage document workflows, and in particular, to encapsulated workflow packages that embed full on-ramping requirements associated with documents captured therein, including any necessary workflow steps applicabl...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a system and method that allows users to send documents and data to any addressable routing destination, beyond traditional email and fax machines. It uses a universal endpoint addressing schema to provide a unique identifier for each destination. Business rules and requirements can be enforced, such as encrypting documents or creating an audit trail. The system allows controlled collaboration across various locations or organizational boundaries while preserving application integrity and business requirements. Overall, the invention expands the addressable endpoints and enhances the efficiency and security of collaborative processes.

Problems solved by technology

Today, the methods most commonly used to communicate or otherwise route documents from one location to another tend to be limited to certain designated endpoints, which typically include e-mail inboxes and fax machines.

However, these methods provide a narrow addressability base, in that documents can only be routed to e-mail addresses associated with target inboxes, fax numbers associated with receiving fax machines, and so on.

Moreover, the information that conventional document routing systems typically use to address these limited routing endpoints often has little (if any) native connection to business rules, which can impose a substantial impact on efficiency, costs, and legal and regulatory compliance due to different constraints that may be associated with handling invoices, claims, order forms, or other business documents.

As such, businesses that employ conventional document routing systems may face governance, risk, and compliance vulnerabilities, among other risks, due to the difficulty or inability to ensure that users properly handle incoming documents based on relevant business rules.

Furthermore, many businesses tend to have relationships that require collaboration and interaction across organizational boundaries, which can raise concerns relating to security, access controls, and proper management relating to how documents, data, and other information that one business may share with another should be handled on the receiving end.

However, conventional document management systems tend to fall short in suitably providing an organization with the ability to control how important or sensitive information will be handled once documents or other materials move beyond organizational boundaries.

Moreover, with cloud and virtualized data centers having increasing prevalence in the modern business marketplace, the opaqueness associated with how third-party entities that provide cloud and virtualized data centers implement access controls or other management mechanisms associated with data hosted therein can compound these security concerns due to the inability to control governance, risk, and compliance issues in third-party data centers based on unique business requirements.

Accordingly, conventional systems that attempt to provide mechanisms to route and manage documents suffer from these and various additional problems.

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