Research On Multi-client Oriented Workflow System

The workflow concept appeared as early as in the70s, mainly originating from theresearch of office automation. Workflow technology may provide support to the enterprisefor various kinds of business activities, which improves the overall coordination efficiency ofcompanies. At present, the workflow technology is widely used in the fields such astelecommunications, software engineering, manufacturing, finance, banking, scientific test,health care, shipping and so on.At the same time, along with the amazing development of the intelligent clienttechnology, smart phones and tablet computers based on platforms such as Android, iOS,Windows Phone have enjoyed an eruptive growth, and intelligent client area has quietlybecome the new direction of development of enterprise applications, and no matter OAsystem or ERP system has started to extend to individual intelligence equipment.Due to the huge variety in operating system, there are quite a few obstacles lying beforethem to have the client promoted to the kinds of intelligent clients: The development andmaintenance cost that is too high. Therefore, this paper researches and designs a workflowmanagement system fit for heterogeneous clients on the basis of the traditional workflowmanagement system with the decoupling of workflow engine from the client technology asthe core solution ideas, combining with form definition technology, code generationtechnology, graphical display technology and remote communication technology, what thesystem can realize is the automatic generation of client programs for various versions withthe help of configuration and definition of the direction of the related process according to the actual service process in the process definition tools, as well as the usage of the formdesigning tool to design the form input format for each node. The system has initiallyachieved automatic generation of target systems only by service configuring without codingdevelopment.Such an automatically workflow management system can be completely realizedthrough reasonable design and technology portfolio on the basis of current workflowtechnology research results and the technical level of relative software development:(1)Released the coupling between workflow engine and client, which designs a role of a singlemiddleware for the workflow engine in the system.(2) Established a communication layerthat face to both the client and workflow engine.(3) Declared the relationship betweenprocess phase and user form, and the detailed input and output format of each phase in theservice can be collected through the form design technology.(4) Design a visual processconfiguration tools by which the detailed service process can be defined.(5) Interface needscollected by the form plan tools can be converted into actual codes of various clients andautomatically compiled into their own releases through the code generation technology.At the end of this paper a most common example of reimbursement flow in enterprisesis presented with iPhone as the client and the configuration of both process engine and iOSclient platform, which realized the functions of routine expense submission and approvalthrough iPhone, demonstrating the feasibility of workflow engine of multi-screen client as thepaper researches.