Planning and execution of tasks in cooperative work environments [office automation]

A description is presented of work being done to construct a planning system to assist in the performance of multiagent, loosely structured, underspecified tasks. Specifically, the authors present a representation for modeling tasks, agents, and objects within such environments and describe the architecture and implementation of a planning system which uses these models to support cooperative work. A description is given of how this planning system is being used to support further research in areas such as exception handling, negotiation, and knowledge acquisition