Task Chaining Mechanism for Business Process Context Preservation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing business process management systems fail to maintain context information across chained human tasks, leading to loss of task history, attachments, and comments, which complicates the workflow and requires manual data copying.
Innovation Solution
Implementing task chaining in business process management systems, where tasks can be linked to maintain references to previous tasks, allowing retrieval of relevant information such as task history, attachments, and comments, enabling context preservation across multiple instances of processes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If human tasks are separated in business process systems, then automation is improved, but context information is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements task chaining by nesting task instances within a hierarchical structure where parent tasks contain references to child tasks. When a task is completed, the system automatically retrieves and attaches context information (comments, attachments, task history) from the parent task to the child task, preserving context across automated and human task boundaries without manual intervention.
2Loss of information
If context information is manually copied between tasks, then information continuity is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs the context information transfer between tasks without requiring user intervention. The task chaining mechanism self-services by automatically retrieving context from parent tasks and attaching it to child tasks, eliminating the need for manual copying while reducing system complexity through automated workflows.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent establishes task chaining relationships in advance during process design, creating predefined parent-child task links. This preliminary configuration enables automatic context transfer to occur seamlessly when tasks are executed, eliminating the need for complex runtime decision-making about which context to copy.
3Adaptability or versatility
If task chaining is implemented across multiple process instances, then adaptability is improved, but data duplication increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses an intermediary mechanism where the parent task instance acts as a reference point. Instead of duplicating entire context data sets across multiple child tasks, the system maintains a single source of truth in the parent task and provides references to the same context information, reducing data duplication while enabling adaptability across process instances.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are described for providing task chaining as part of modeling a business process (e.g. a BPEL process). Chained tasks maintain a reference to the previous task and during retrieval of that task, the system can append relevant information, including but not limited to task history, attachments and comments of the previous task. Task chaining can be enabled by selecting a previously completed task and marking that the current task chains the selected task. In one embodiment, tasks are chained across multiple instances of a process. Accordingly, tasks in different processes can be chained together to obtain access to the same context information and other data.