{"id":33,"date":"2006-07-06T08:39:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-06T16:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2006-07-06T08:39:30","modified_gmt":"2006-07-06T16:39:30","slug":"ad-hoc-workflow-and-ecm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/ad-hoc-workflow-and-ecm\/","title":{"rendered":"Ad Hoc Workflow and ECM"},"content":{"rendered":"

The terms Ad-hoc workflow\u00a0and Ad-hoc routing describe a type of business process that defies easy capture and description.\u00a0 They refer to business processes that are created in a dynamic and flexible manner.\u00a0 An Ad-hoc workflow describes the creative work process of a group of knowledge workers<\/a>.\u00a0 It usually\u00a0isn’t feasible to rigidly model ad-hoc workflow scenarios because this type of workflow happens very infrequently\u00a0and the interactions of the actors in the scenarios\u00a0aren’t easily anticipated or quantifiable.<\/p>\n

Standard Business Process Management<\/a> (BPM) and workflow<\/a> tools are great for achieving large paybacks in terms of increased efficiencies for high-volume, very reproducible workflow scenarios.\u00a0 Loan and insurance form processing are two applications that immediately come to mind as classic examples of where workflow has been applied with success.<\/p>\n

Outside the world of high-volume workflow, successful solutions that identify the needs and accelerate the interaction of knowledge workers have been harder to come by.\u00a0 One exception is the wiki.\u00a0 Wikis<\/a> have filled a niche in the collaboration tool space for enabling group publishing of content.\u00a0 In a business environment, a wiki can be an important tool for members within a group to communicate, but it is weak in handling situations where control is needed in specifying who\u00a0needs to\u00a0contribute and within what time frame a comment is required.<\/p>\n

Ad-hoc workflow in the form of business\u00a0interactions are happening all the time, but boiling down the common features of all these interactions is hard to do.\u00a0\u00a0One commonality found in the\u00a0majority of high-value interactions in the workplace is the solitication\u00a0for collaboration\u00a0and review comments\u00a0from team members\u00a0and business partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A review process, for example, almost always\u00a0centers around a file, form\u00a0or document that contains a visual or written description of the task under review.\u00a0 Ideally the review process will track revision histories and manage the process securely.\u00a0 When thought of this way, document management is a natural foundation\u00a0for supporting ad-hoc reviews.\u00a0 Document management is a central component of ECM<\/a>\u00a0and allows the secure tracking of document version and revision histories.<\/p>\n

Another natural tool that can support ad-hoc workflows, like the review process, is email.\u00a0SPAM and security issues though threaten this approach.<\/p>\n

One example of a promising technology was a proprietary technology called Zaplets<\/a> that began evolving 4-5 years ago.\u00a0 Zaplets embedded collaborative forms and documents directly within the email payload.\u00a0 When you would open the HTML email message in your favorite email client tool, you would immediately see the collaborative form or document embedded as HTML.\u00a0 Data in the Zaplet was synchronized with a central server.\u00a0 The user could then interact with the email HTML form and submit or forward his contributions to the email payload.<\/p>\n

Zaplet technology didn’t survive, possibly due to security and email client vulnerabilities to Javascript embedded within emails.\u00a0 But while the Zaplet technology\u00a0failed, the concept of adopting the email client as part of the collaboration\u00a0solution\u00a0is compelling, especially given the fact that most knowledge workers spend the better part of their work day working within\u00a0email.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the Formtek’s<\/a> WebReview<\/a> application, we’ve\u00a0integrated email into the review process by allowing secure document URLs to be\u00a0sent as part of the email message body.\u00a0 Before being able to access and comment on the contents of the review, the recipient\u00a0is fully authenticated.\u00a0 The content being reviewed is securely stored and versioned within the central ECM repository.\u00a0 In this way actions can be distributed to reviewers via secure links referenced from within email with no dependence on a specific email client.<\/p>\n

Email is sure to evolve, but currently because of it’s widespread acceptance, using it as a tool to support Ad Hoc Workflow and Review activities makes great sense.<\/p>\n

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The terms Ad-hoc workflow\u00a0and Ad-hoc routing describe a type of business process that defies easy capture and description.\u00a0 They refer to business processes that are created in a dynamic and flexible manner.\u00a0 An Ad-hoc workflow describes the creative work process…<\/span><\/p>\n

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