Using Business Rule Engine to Integrate Electronic Form with Workflow Management System

Electronic form system integrates with workflow management system (WFMS) more and more closely nowadays. However, there are still some serious problems existing in the integration, which are as follows: 1) Achieving the aim of correct access control of form elements, 2) Mapping parameters between workflow variable and form elements, and 3) Customizing and reusing the process of form elements to decline the coupling between electronic form system and workflow management system. To resolve the above problems, we propose a new framework, adopting business rule engine as the intermediary to integrate electronic form with workflow management system. This design involves dynamic configuration for the access control of form elements, special parameters mapping combined with business rule engine, and loosely coupled form elements processing.