Flexible real-time meeting support for workflow management systems

Two different areas of distributed group work are supported by workflow management systems and by real time meeting systems. Workflow management is best suited for tasks which proceed in a predefinable way, and whose recurring appearance justify the cost of an a priori modelling. A problem of a priori modelling is that such models are static. Activities which arise spontaneously cannot be easily covered. Real time meeting support systems are best suited for such ad hoc group activities. Audiovisual connectivity and shared documents enable flexible group processes. To combine the advantages of both types of system, an integration concept and prototype system is introduced. Meetings are embedded into workflows using different categories of meeting models. Monitoring and checklisting support the course of meetings. The coupling of workflow management and meeting support is achieved by a meeting broker