Integration with Thingamy
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General Use Case
The idea is to show how microblogging can act as a integration platform for process-related activitites 1. Data collection for info / context around unstructured (or barely repeatable) processes 1. Adds free-form discovery/discussion to the process without losing data relationships for reports and history
Thingamy’s ‘Work Processor’ runs the workflow without glitch with path choices at most corners -- punting a little ‘train’ of relevant and inter-realted objects (Workflow/issue/request/idea object -- the main one + Assignment objects) through a workflow. The Assignment objects holds the task instructions and captures what’s done in the assignment while the Workflow objects holds the details about the issue/idea/request. That way an Assignee is presented with a list of relevant objects, all the pertinent information required for a specific task + the Assignment object to fill in with result and files. When having been assigned a task, or when trying to get one’s head around the progress of a workflow there is always a need for ad-hoc communication with co-workers and/or other participants, “anybody know…?”, “Could somebody help with…?” etc. Normally that would happen by email, phone or walking over -- all of which limits the discovery of the unknown, like a co-worker having unknown but useful knowledge or ideas.
Apache ESME adds that crucial part of ‘Discovery & Discussion’ that inevitably happens during any process, in a task or when studying the progress. In addition it should become the natural in-system conduit for communication as well as the social pivot point, the water cooler, for the group/department/firm.
Most other E 2.0 efforts tries to add some notion of ‘process’ on top of separate and siloed apps drifting towards becoming middleware 2.0 -- better is to have an underlying ‘process engine’ that gives the main flow framework and datamodel using social media for the in-task ‘Discovery & Discussion’. Crucial is that the data in the two parts are related -- in this case any ESME message can be related to any Thingamy object adding context to both sides.
I don’t know what next step, as in features, will be -- our philosophy is to keep it as simple as possible in the beginning and only add if it makes huge sense and works in practice. So we’ll see, the good thing is that both Apache ESME and Thingamy are extremely nimble and doing crazy stunts underway should be easy!
Demo video
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Task integration
- Apache ESME as part of #thingamy workarea. When doing a task punt messages like "anybody knows this?" tagged automatically
- When in a task, tag messages made there, later filter by same so messages are part of 'task data'
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