Developing Workspace Components and Modeling Collaborative Systems

2. Advisory component.
A component that allows two people to place comments about a selected object (usually a WWW page.). One of the persons becomes the advisor. (Senior undergraduate of Master level project. Requires writing cgi program).

3. Defining workspace norms.
Setting up workspaces for project teams. Define project management processes and ways to support them using workspaces. This can be carried out in conjunction with the building Faculty.

4. Develop domain specific interfaces based on the LiveNet J2EE platform.

5. Workspace architectures.
Developing an architecture or workspace networks using UML. 

2. Implementation issues
Develop interaction algorithms for agents

3. Define UML implementations of agents based on AgentUML proposals.

Intelligent Workflow Systems

1. Design methods.
What is the best paradigm for designing workflow systems. The intelligent agent paradigm perhaps? What should a design methodology for workflow systems look like?

2. Defining emergent processes. What are the best ways to define and support the dynamics of emergent processes. The project will require the building of a visual support interface.

3. Learning Processes.
How can learning processes be facilitated with workflow and workspace systems?

3. Storing Process Knowledge.
Storing generic processes for reuse. New processes composed as part of process improvement are stored in memory and can reused if similar goals arise. (Research Project).

4. Workflow user environment
Computer-based workflow tools support forms of decision-making bodies that have no parallel in traditional systems (eg a one-person opinion, a committee opinion). If computer-based workflow tools are to be deployed then how should an organisation design its decision making structures so as to benefit most from those tools? This is a profound question. A less profound, but equally important, question is how should the system support a group of users who are considering the same or related questions at the same or similar times. This is mainstream CSCW research.

2. Integration with agents to present living interactive workspaces.

Strategic Workflow Systems

1. Strategic workflow management
How do we control the operation of a soft workflow system so as to bring the overall performance on the system into line with strategic objectives? For example a workflow system may support the processing claims in an insurance company. Does the workflow system enable us to control the cost and quality of the workflows, for example?

2. Decision support environment
A computer-based workflow system should do more than manage the documents that are part of its workflows. The system should also assist the users to make the decisions required of them. In particular they should support the user in obtaining knowledge. For example, if a person being considered for employment resides in country X then the user may want to know what procedure is required to obtain a visa for that person and how long is the procedure likely to take. Likewise the user of the system may be required to provide knowledge for the benefit of a (possibly unknown) other user. In other words the systems should support knowledge sharing.

3. Dealing with uncertainty.
If opinions are presented to the workflow system to a stated level of certainty then how should the system combine these opinions and stated certainty factors? how should the system deal with conflicting opinions? how should the system combine these individual opinions into an overall measure of the certainty of an entire workflow?

Design Methodology