Personal Workflow Management in Support of Pervasive Computing

With the advent of new wireless technologies, mobile personal computers (MPCs) are quickly gaining their popularity. Concurrently an increasingly number of services for MPCs have been developed. However, current services view PMCs as a vehicle to perform individual activities. No attempt has been made to provide process services that reach mobile users via their PMCs. In the real world, many personal applications are process-oriented, e.g., planning a trip, holding a party, applying a new job, etc. We expect PMCs to help manage and execute these processes in the future, serving the role of planning, coordinating, and reminding task executions so as to accomplish predefined personal goals. On the other hand, traditional workflow management systems are mainly used to coordinate business processes in enterprises. These processes must be repetitive and have well-formed structures. Personal processes differ from their business counterparts in that they are subject to change and rigid regulations on control flow are seldom imposed. As a result, personal activities are related mainly due to their data dependencies and their coordination must be flexible. These differences demand a new personal workflow model as well as the innovative design of a personal workflow system (PWFS).