What's new in workflow at AIIM?

Every year at the AIIM show, vendors promote the new capabilities of their workflow products, and it takes a discerning eye to separate feature updates from true innovation. Based on our previews of soon-to-be-released workflow products from multiple vendors, we have identified a select few that are demonstrating creative approaches within the workflow marketplace.

This year there was a distinct trend away from workflow as an application--the presentation of accounts payable, claims processing or customer service applications--and toward the workflow-enablement of existing line-of-business applications. This is not a new development; it was discussed widely last year at AIIM. What is new is that vendors are making it a reality. Workflow vendors have shifted their focus from adding new features to simplify workflow development, to addressing the requirements for managing large distributed enterprise workflows. Products with an enterprise focus must address the challenges of workflow-enabling widely disparate applications, including structured and unstructured processes, and making those applications accessible from any desktop.

From the large group of workflow vendors attempting to address these challenges, Staffware, Plexus and JetForm have taken the most inventive approaches.

Staffware

Staffware has one of the most established products in the workflow market. The company is known for its extensive cross-platform support on both the server and client sides, and its newest releases--Staffware 97 and Staffware Global--provide Internet-based workflow.

Staffware has undertaken a major development project to provide the next generation of its workflow product. The company has correctly anticipated the increased need to embed workflow functionality into line-of-business applications. With the extended support it has made available for Microsoft's COM technology, Staffware has layered the COM object model on top of its older proprietary API set allowing for significant improvements in application development and integration. Using both ActiveX controls and Visual Basic property sheets, workflow function modules can assemble the order in which events (present, view, index object, query database) should occur. These modules can then be quickly assembled into full workflow applications. Staffware has also focused on the workflow user interface and how it can be tied to specific applications.

Staffware's innovation constitutes a tool for accelerated workflow application development and more powerful integration. The end result is increased integrator productivity, as the workflow developer is freed up from the workflow vendor's API set and can now focus on standard tools. For the developer who is workflow-enabling line-of-business applications, Staffware's product raises the bar for workflow integration.

Plexus

Plexus is one of the original developers of workflow software. The company has continually enhanced its FloWare product to meet new demands of the market. Like many other vendors, Plexus has increasingly focused on Internet-based workflow as a way of extending workflow implementation across the enterprise.

This year Plexus has set the benchmark for Java-based, Internet-enabled workflow with FloWare 5.0. The company has introduced a critical feature to the future of Web-based workflow: the ability for a disconnected user to remain an active participant in a workflow application. FloWare accomplishes this by encapsulating workflow functions within Java applications. The series of actions a work object can participate in and the paths those actions demand in a workflow can be built into the Java application executed by the disconnected client. Contingencies that are always an important part of every workflow can now be incorporated as part of the application, even for those Internet participants who may be online only infrequently.

Plexus has provided a clear direction for one of the problems that plague workflow applications over the Internet--how to maintain control over the work in an application when the participants are not only remote, but are literally inaccessible at times from the workflow system itself.

JetForm

JetForm is known for its sophisticated electronic forms applications, but has shown an investment in enterprise workflow solutions that builds upon its forms expertise. With InTempo 3.0, JetForm targets a portion of the market that we believe is currently underserved.

The figure below characterizes the current state of the market for workflow technologies. At one end of the spectrum are the ad hoc applications--the less structured processes, generally handling low volumes and capable of being addressed by the routing features of messaging systems and E-mail. At the other end are the production workflow applications--generally highly structured, high-volume, business-critical applications that require integration with databases.

While many current products address either ad hoc or production workflow, fewer offerings address the needs of enterprises that lie somewhere in between. And, as the figure shows, that middle space between ad hoc and production workflow is precisely where the needs of many organizations currently lie; the installations with the largest number of user seats are for products that offer features of both ad hoc and production workflow.

Figure 1 The Current Workflow Market (Source: Amit Sheth, University of Georgia)

Focusing its product on this middle space, JetForm has engineered a product that addresses the needs of both highly structured and less structured applications. InTempo leverages the message-based transport for notification and the existing operating system infrastructure for user security needs, but is able to move beyond messaging-based transport systems with its use of any relational database via ODBC. Utilizing a standard SQL database provides InTempo with a number of benefits, including transaction speed, database recovery, workflow status reporting and an accessible central repository of workflow data. All of these capabilities are standard requirements in production-level workflows.

InTempo can be used to build customized applications for the standard thick client. But it can also address the needs of a range of Web clients, from the sophisticated Web user who needs dynamically generated Java applications, to the basic HTML "view-and-route" client.

InTempo is a great solution for organizations that want to provide workflow access to every desktop in the organization, especially where there is a need to support ad hoc, loosely structured processes, as well as highly structured business processes.

The trend toward enterprise workflow applications has led vendors such as Staffware, Plexus and JetForm to enhance their products, making them more attractive to developers and integrators who increasingly seek to workflow-enable widely diverse applications. The workflow market has matured, moving from an initial fascination with the features of the technology to the building of standard workflow applications and now to this current stage: workflow-enablement of applications that may already exist.

The challenge of this new development environment is that workflow functionality needs to be consistent across thick and thin clients, for structured and non-structured processes, and whether embedded in an existing line-of business-application or part of a completely new EDMS solution. Some vendor