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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