E.DOCS

Integration-Friendly Workflow

Metastorm (Severna Park, MD) has a slightly different philosophy that leaves room to combine all of these approaches. Metastorm’s e-work 4.0 is an enterprise workflow product that delivers Web-enabled workflow supported over intranets, extranets or the Internet.

e-work is an affordable product that is built on a database architecture rather then an email routing system. The company’s mantra, according to Brain McPhee, vice president of marketing, is to “extend corporate knowledge.”

“Organizations have made tremendous investments in their corporate systems,” McPhee says. “We can extend the reach of these systems to customers, clients and partners and help organizations make more use of that knowledge.”

e-work accomplishes this by integrating simple or complex tasks into existing enterprise applications, such as ERP and sales force automation systems. This is facilitated in many ways, but it all starts with an integration wizard. The wizard can display a list of more than one hundred help items by category, but only those items that are valid in the current context of the application are displayed.

These selections can help link certain data types from your applications with certain functions, such as automatically printing a document, sending an email or applying conditions to rules.

The wizard also helps to integrate external databases. e-work ships with a Microsoft Jet Engine database, but this can be supplemented with any ODBC-compliant alternative, such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server or Oracle.

Workflow processes can be completely developed offline in the e-works designer and then published to the corporate ODBC-compliant database.

Management reports can be generated from the database to provide intelligence about the way the workflow procedures are being used. e-work can also issue timers, escalate urgent jobs or schedule routine procedures.

e-work includes a 16-bit workflow client as well as a thin Web-based interface. The software uses DCOM to communicate with the Web server interface and uses TCP/IP to communicate with its clients. It does not require a particular messaging system, but it integrates with any MAPI-compliant system to send alerts, messages and attachments.

Another nicety is the GUI-based graphical workflow designer that places icons into a diagram to map out processes. The designer provides plenty of options and tools. Forms are built into stages to create actions. Roles can be assigned to users and exceptions or alerts can be added to stages using simple dialog boxes. This is also where you can use the integration wizard to add actions into other applications.

The infrastructure requirements for e-work are slim-to-none. All the components, including the designer and the database, can be installed on a single Windows 95 or NT server or on different servers.

e-work is affordable. A typical installation runs about $125 per user.

A 32-bit version, 4.5, of e-work is due this fall, and it will feature an open API that will let you use any application as the client. This will provide an integrated face to an already-affordable, easy-to-deploy workflow system.

• Metastorm’s e-work offers real-time integration with Novell NDS corporate directory management system. Organizations with NDS can make use of the user and role information in their enterprise-wide workflow applications. For information on NDS, go to www.novell.com/products/nds/index.html

• The Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) is a non-profit, international organization of workflow vendors, users, analysts and research groups. The coalition promotes and develops the use of workflow by establishing standards for software terminology, interoperability and connectivity between workflow products. Visit them at www.aiim.org/wfmc/mainframe.htm

• Go to www.waria.com and check out the non-profit Workflow And Reengineering International Association (WARIA). Their charter is to identify and clarify issues that are common to all users of workflow, electronic commerce and those who are in the process of reengineering their organizations.

Metadata Metastorm, Severna Park, MD
410-647-9691
www.metastorm.com

Product: e-work 4.0

Description: Enterprise workflow that uses a database architecture and web interface to extend organizations existing applications.

Features: Integration wizard can build support for many applications. No client software or plug-ins are necessary. Supports ODBC databases. Includes an easy-to-use graphical workflow designer.

Client: DHTML-compliant Web browser

Server: Windows 95/NT

Web server: Netscape or Microsoft Web server

Price: About $150 for each full-service client; limited-function clients available at lower costs.

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