International Business Machines Corporation

Neil Harold Arthur Boyette

Vikas Krishna

Isaac Kam-Chak Cheng

Savitha Srinivasan

Timothy Joel Bethea

Dawn Marie Fritz

Issac Kam-Chak Cheng

A method and system for specifying, deploying and updating work flows. A request is received from a user of a system with components comprising a computing system and human representatives. The components facilitate routing and servicing the request. A work flow comprising manual and automatic steps is specified to perform the routing and servicing of the request. The automatic steps are automatically performed by the computing system and the manual steps are manually performed by the representatives. Both the automatic steps and the manual steps are uniformly defined in a single general-purpose markup language (e.g., XML). Further, a manual step is dynamically transformed into a new automatic step that is represented as a new XML action element. The new XML action element includes an identifier of a software routine to be executed to perform the new automatic step.

Method and system for specifying, deploying and dynamically updating work flows

A system and method for defining and dynamically invoking polymorphic call flows in a call flow system. Call flows are defined that include a publisher call flow and subscriber call flows. A first trigger point in a publisher call flow is defined. Triggers specifying late-binding references to trigger points are defined in the subscriber call flows. Subsequent to the call flows being published in a repository, the publisher call flow is executed, the first trigger point is located, and the publisher call flow is executed. Without changing any other call flow and without terminating and restarting the publisher call flow, a call flow is added to the call flow system and invoked or a call flow is removed.

System and method for defining and dynamically invoking polymorphic call flows

A method for specifying, deploying and updating work flows. A work flow comprising manual and automatic steps is created in a computing system A first XML schema set represents the automatic steps. The XML schemas in the first XML schema set identify software routines for performing the automatic steps. A second XML schema set represents the manual steps. The XML schemas in the second XML schema set include instructions directing human representatives to perform the manual steps. A runtime component executes the first and second XML schema sets. Without terminating the runtime component, a manual step is represented in an XML schema to be added to the first set. Representing the manual step includes transforming the manual step into an automatic step represented in the XML schema and adding to the XML schema a class name and method name identifying a software routine that performs the automatic step.

Method for specifying, deploying and dynamically updating work flows

A method for defining and dynamically invoking polymorphic call flows in a call flow system. A publisher call flow and subscriber call flows are defined. A first trigger point in the publisher call flow is defined. Triggers specifying late-binding references to trigger points are defined in the subscriber call flows. A second trigger point in a first subscriber call flow is defined. A trigger specifying a late-binding reference to the second trigger point is defined. Publishing the call flows includes storing a second subscriber call flow's representation that includes a first trigger's representation. To execute the publisher call flow, identifiers of the publisher call flow and the first trigger point are located in the first trigger's representation. Without changing any other call flow and without terminating and restarting the publisher call flow, a call flow is added to the call flow system and invoked.

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Neil Harold Arthur Boyette