Cloud Workflow Platform Manifest Sharing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing workflow architectures require customers to recreate advanced tasks each time, lacking collaboration and ease of development, leading to 'islands of productivity' and inefficient workflow reuse.
Innovation Solution
A cloud-based workflow platform enables secure remote development and sharing of workflows, using a manifest that defines configuration requirements and third-party interactions, allowing users to embed, reuse, and share workflows across tenants, with features like tenanted, exported, and linked sharing types.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If workflows are created on low-code development platforms with component reuse, then ease of manufacture is improved, but productivity is worsened due to islands of productivity and lack of collaboration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges isolated workflow islands into a unified cloud-based marketplace where workflows can be shared, discovered, and reused across multiple tenants. The workflow server consolidates workflows from different customers into a central repository, enabling cross-tenant discovery and reuse while maintaining security boundaries.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal workflow marketplace that serves multiple functions: hosting workflows, enabling discovery, facilitating reuse, and supporting collaboration. The system allows workflows to be accessed by multiple tenants through a single platform, making the workflow creation and sharing infrastructure multi-functional and universally applicable.
2Reliability
If advanced tasks are created anew each time by each customer, then reliability is improved through custom customization, but loss of time increases due to redundant creation work
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables preliminary creation of workflows by one customer that can then be reused by others. Workflows are created once in the cloud marketplace and pre-configured with all necessary logic, then rapidly deployed to multiple tenants who can customize them as needed, eliminating redundant creation work while maintaining reliability through proven templates.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a copying mechanism where workflows can be replicated from one tenant to another through the cloud marketplace. Customers can copy proven workflows from the marketplace and adapt them to their specific needs, significantly reducing creation time while maintaining reliability through copying of tested and validated workflow logic.
3Productivity
If workflows are shared across tenants through cloud-based platform, then productivity is improved through collaboration and reuse, but device complexity increases due to multi-tenant architecture and security management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a cloud-based workflow server as an intermediary between tenants and workflows. This mediator manages the complexity of multi-tenant architecture, security boundaries, and workflow distribution, allowing tenants to collaborate and reuse workflows without directly managing the underlying system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where the workflow server monitors workflow usage, performance, and security across tenants. This feedback enables automated management of the multi-tenant environment, adjusting security policies, resource allocation, and workflow distribution based on actual usage patterns, thereby reducing the perceived complexity for end users.
Data Source
AI summary
Workflow sharing system and method are disclosed that allow a workflow server to provide a shared workflow, wherein the shared workflow generates at least one manifest, wherein the at least one manifest comprises a third-party interaction field, a credentials field, an input parameter field, and an output parameter field, wherein the workflow server receives a request for access to the shared workflow and transmits the at least one manifest of the shared workflow in response to the request for access to the shared workflow, wherein the at least one manifest comprises an acceptance requirement of the third-party interaction field, the credentials field, the input parameter field, and the output parameter field, wherein the workflow server receive consents of the acceptance requirement of the at least one manifest; and allows access to the shared workflow in response to the received consent of the acceptance requirement of the at least one manifest.