Agent-Oriented
Workflow: An Experience Report
Pamela M. Rostal
Compuware Corporation
Minneapolis Professional
Services Division
3600 West 80th
Street
Bloomington,
Minnesota 55431
E-mail: prostal@acm.org
ABSTRACT
This article is an experience
report showing how autonomous software agents are being used to implement
the business process and entity components that compose a workflow-intensive
call center application. It starts
by recounting the business background, requirements, and early approaches.
The next section details the knowledge representations used to depict
the process model, the domain model and the rule base. This is followed by
a discussion of agent types and how they collaborate to meet business needs.
The fourth section consists of an example demonstrating how a group
of agents might keep a hypothetical work queue in equilibrium. The final section
shows how interface agents might facilitate rule specification.
Patel , D., Sutherland, J., Miller, J., (Eds.) Business Object Design
and Implementation V: OOPSLA'99 Workshop Proceedings. Springer, 1999 (full
text available at the Workshop).
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