Best Online Examples of Workflow Patterns?

g8orade writes "In his bestselling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman lists workflow management software in the top 5 Flatteners. During my work for a shipping startup, I have analyzed our software's many UI weaknesses, particularly related to workflow management, and am currently searching for the best online examples of various UI application patterns / widgets that address managing transaction flows. What are the best examples you know of that are commonly viewable on the web?" "Our software UI is Oracle (9i) Forms compiled to run with Java, through the web. We're using RT for our internal ticket tracking and it has many of the features listed. Also, we're evaluating several commercial document management systems as bolt-ons or companions to our in-house application. Here are some patterns we'd like to improve:

• Queue with count beside it. Example: 'Unshipped orders (5)'
• Screen for UI building of a search and ability to save the search as a queue
• List of queues showing all transaction counts and their various states
• Transaction list / table screen (should have an many possible features as a standard spreadsheet: pick your columns, column order, sort order, clickable column headings, export to various formats, print view, etc.)
• Detail view screen (one transaction, may include too many fields to display at once, requiring tabs, scrolling up and down, left to right, etc., should have a good printable view)
• Contact database built-in or connection to one from another system
• Auto messaging of various statuses to contacts and lists of contacts, above
• Full web accessibility and security model to allow our suppliers and clients access to their own queues for 'pull queries', in addition to what we email them.
• Ability to create a list of values for a field, then incorporate that into the query for a queue.
• Journal of a transaction
• Screen showing progression of a transaction
• Screen showing Parent / child parts of a transaction"

Comments

Link for Pattern Language

[mmThe1]

... in the article (just posted) is incorrect.

The correct link is http://www.patternlanguage.com/

Why patterns?

[waffleman]

Seriously, could someone explain to me why patterns are what is needed here? From my experience, user interface design takes a deep understanding of customer requirements. Applying patterns would seem (imo) like an entrapping short cut that ultimately would be a waste of time. Any thoughts?

Re:Why patterns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. It sounds like they want their own unique and very customized software solution. There is no such thing as a generic pattern for every different business application. Banks operate differently from clothing stores, which operate differently from auto shops. If there was such a piece of software, that you could buy shrink-wrapped off the shelf, push a few buttons (say about 10 buttons max), then be able to give it to some high school graduate to use on a daily basis, and have your small business up and running on that software platform in just a few days.... that would be an incredible feat and you would be a billionaire if you could invent such a thing. In fact, the closest thing to this is Google, which is basically a Universal Answer Machine. You ask it a Question (phrased in the form of a search query) and it gives you the Answer(s) in response. I would argue that only very few pieces of software have nearly universal applicability to businesses, and the Google Search Engine is one of them. Some people have likened Google's massive repository of knowledge to Artificial Intelligence, and I would agree. It is the closest thing we humans have created so far to Artificial Intelligence.

Re:Why patterns?

[JoshRoss]

I personally find patterns one-step away from being useless. They are almost by design so generic as to be applicable to everything that they are appropriate for nothing.

Re:Why patterns?

[MrNixon]

Perhaps we should coin a new law for the Internet and call it Nixon's Law:

Nixon's Law states that:

Any discussion of resonable length on the Internet will eventually devolve into a discussion about Google.

C'mon man. It's just a search engine. They've managed to index a whole lot of content and it *is* quite useful, but it's still a search engine - I'm not quite convinced that Google is the second coming, or even the cure for cancer.

It's amazing how the flavour of the moment is always the solution to all our problems - but if history serves, Google will be an important and perhaps integral part of our future society and economy - but it will not be the universal solution that we seem to think it will be.

Re:Why patterns?

[rossifer]

They are almost by design so generic [...] that they are appropriate for nothing

I find them useful for communication. If my design is similar to a pattern (most patterns are only part of any solution) then I can use the name of the pattern to describe my design more quickly. Often, because a pattern will include several distinct elements, I am able to convey several nuances of a particular design with only one or two words.

Explaining a design in terms of patterns is also a cool way of mentoring junior developers. You can back them out of the details of "this problem" and take a look at the more general situation, what the pattern suggests, and then go back to "this problem" and see how it fits in. Often you'll be able to elicit multiple "a-ha!'s" from the junior.

Back to your point, I find that the best pattern authors understand that they must strike a useful balance between generality and specificity. You still have to design the solution, but the top-level "how the heck do I get started here" is what's described by the pattern. Fowler tends to be better than the GoF at this particular skill.

Of course, getting the most utility out of patterns absolutely requires that you are an experienced designer (or are working with one). This means applying all of the classic design skills, including patterns, as appropriate to solve the problem (and that may mean no use of patterns for a particular problem).

Regards,
Ross

YAWL

[asphinx]

Have a look at the YAWL project of the Business Process Modelling Group at the Queensland University of Technology. YAWL stands for Yet Another Workflow Language and is based on petri nets. The BPM group claims it can model any workflow pattern. Link: http://www.yawl.fit.qut.edu.au/.

Re:YAWL

[BarryNorton]

Have a look at the YAWL project of the Business Process Modelling Group at the Queensland University of Technology.

Despite the title, he doesn't seem to really be talking about workflow patterns, but about common UI idioms that fit into a workflow-driven app (though some of these may be associated with data/resource patterns).

Huh?

[TrappedByMyself]

Are we talking about globalization or software design? WTF?

I get the weird feeling that you're trying to solve your problems by throwing more processes, tools, and abstract concepts to the mix.
Just learn about use cases, flow charts, and screen mock-ups and your world will be simple and happy.

Open Source Solution

[mudwump]

I have looked fairly extensively for a nice open source version of a workflow type program. One that I am currently watching is http://pentaho.org/. This is a very impressive package of not only workflow but business intellegence and reporting.

Re:Why don't you DO YOUR JOB?

[Tsar]

Afraid I have to agree with the AC, g8orade. You haven't even posted on /. since May '02 (and haven't answered anyone else's "Ask Slashdot" question, like, ever) and you're expecting everyone here to do your googling for you? Again?

I, for one, do not welcome our lazy, buck-passing overlords.

OfBiz

[Felonius Thunk]

It has a worfklow engine that may be too abstract as a starting place for you, but the OfBiz app itself may already be doing pretty much everything you want anyway. It's java, open source, and been around for years, though not easy to tweak or get stably up and running.

Agreeing with afformentioned posts...

[Chabil Ha']

Here's a link you might follow to get you onto the right foot. It seems to me that all of your 'needs' only *need* some research. Jakob Nielsen's usibility guidlines are a good headstart. My own suggestion would be KISS.

Examples

[Velox_SwiftFox]

Well, I've always thought a little icon of an envelope was pretty good for representing mail.

Best Practice

[Anonymous Coward]

I found an excellent resource for this. They cover a new example each work day. Some of the examples are truly brillant.

If you want to get the best

[Allnighterking]

Go to the person who is most likely the creator of the whole idea of UI testing and design. Jeff Raskin. All others came after him. His writings, ideas etc are still maintained by his family on his home page.

http://jef.raskincenter.org/home/

Including his work on the Humane Interface.

Friedman? Are you a PHB?

[BorgCopyeditor]

No mention of Friedman's steaming pile of content-free platitudes would be complete without a link to this very funny review thereof:

Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end--and I'm not joking here--we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.

Re:Why don't you DO YOUR JOB?

[sonamchauhan]

Because it makes for an interesting discussion.

Re:Why don't you DO YOUR JOB?

[WasterDave]

Nah, I disagree man. I'd like to know more about what the UI problems with workflows are ... I'm a really big project-management-software hater and am intrigued to see if there are any experiments with alternative UI's.

It happens to be (about to be) my job too, so you can accuse me of self interest too. But hey - interesting discussion. Better than some halfarsed regurgitated press release, eh?

Dave

Workflow Patterns Site

[Tom Davies]

I've found this useful: http://is.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/