BPEL4People Specifications Published

[Rickayzen, Alan]

Dear Workflow experts,

I never said farewell to this group (and never will) even though my line
of business within SAP is no longer workflow but Duet, the Microsoft/SAP
integration.

Nevertheless, I've had my head down with colleagues from SAP as well as
the original BPEL4People whitepaper authors from IBM - and other
companies who joined later, too, - putting the finishing touches to the
specifications that solve the BPEL4People problem (human interaction in
BPEL processes).

The specifications were published simultaneously one minute ago:

SAP: https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpel4people 
Google for the other companies ;-)

I hope this will help bridge the gap between Web Service Orchestration
(sounds posh - but it's simply trying to bring order from chaos) and
traditional workflow. There are two specifications, BPEL4People and
WS-HumanTask. The WS-HumanTask specification is not dependent on BPEL or
other process standards so it might well be the more significant in the
long run. It's very much along the lines of what I was trying to achieve
with the SAP NetWeaver IT scenario "Business Task Management". Well, at
least a step in that direction.

I'm rambling but I just wanted you guys to be the first to know. 

Even though it make take a long, long time before it really helps in the
daily work of customizing workflows or getting your tasks in the UWL or,
or, or.... I hope in the longterm that this brace of standards will
eventually be seen as a significant way of simplifying and establishing
workflow deployment in any and every company, making your jobs and
know-how all the more important both now and in the future.

Best regards,

Alan Rickayzen
SAP AG