Homepage
of the FRODO TaskMan
Content
Contact
For more information you can contact Heiko Maus
further links:
FRODO project, DFKI Knowledge
Management Department
updates:
17.06.04: added presentation about TaskMan architecture and evaluation
results (see Presentations)
16.09.04: added KI publication
22.11.04: added gnowsis and some remarks on the predecessor project
KnowMore
20.07.05: added some recent publications
06.03.06: we were at the CeBit with the TaskNavigator
11.12.06: some more publications and a projects section
14.03.08: a finished Ph.D. in the publications section
Objective
Knowledge-intensive
activities can typically not be modeled
sufficiently by classical,
static process
models and workflows. To enable a process-oriented
knowledge management
approach under
these
circumstances, the concept of weakly-structured
workflows
has been
developed.
This approach
integrates
process modeling and workflow enactment and
facilitates active information
support in
dynamically changing process
environments. Furthermore, the approach allows process knowledge
itself
to be used as a valuable resource in knowledge management.
The FRODO
TaskMan is a demonstrator for this concept of weakly
structured workflows.
It is an
agent-based workflow management system integrated in
organizational memory information systems.
The TaskMan was
developed within the FRODO project at the DFKI Knowledge
Management Department.
(update) Currently, we refer
to this concept as agile
knowledge
workflow
to stress both parts of this concept,
namely a
flexible workflow approach (therefore agile) and the
connection to business process-oriented knowledge management.
TaskMan
prototype
A screenshot of
the user interface:
On the left hand
side there is the workflow (with task hierarchies) and
on the right hand side
the task manager
which allows to model and work on the task.
Here is a
figure showing our workflow agent society with some of
the used speechacts:
We did an evaluation
of the
FRODO Taskman. We published the results in a paper
and here you can find some pictures.
Used
tools
Tools we used
for the development of the FRODO TaskMan
- Protégé 2000
from Stanford University, togehter with the RDFBackend and Ontoviz
- TRIPLE (RDF
query, inference, and transformation language for the
Semantic Web)
- Jess (Java
Expert System Shell)
- JessTab
(allows to use Protégé and Jess together)
- RDF2Java
(import and export of RDF instances to/from Java objects, which is an
enhanced version of this
one)
- our FRODO AgentFramework is based on Jade (Java Agent
Development Framework)
- for Information Retrieval, we used
- graphical frameworks:
- Graphviz
(open source graph drawing software) from AT&T
- JGraph (Graph
visualization for Java Swing)
- Touchgraph (creation
and navigation of ineractive graphs)
- Hypertree
(hyperbolic
tree visualization)
- eclipse as development
platform
- First
integration efforts started to integrate the semantic desktop gnowsis
TaskNavigator
The TaskNavigator is the web-based successor of the FRODO TaskMan.
see, e.g., the CIKM paper
At the CeBit 2006, we presented the successor TaskNavigator. You'll find infomaterial in the DFKI Newsletter (german / engl )
Presentations
- FRODO TaskMan: Weak Workflows –
Supporting Knowledge Work with
Enhanced Workflow Concepts
This is a presentation of the concept and the demonstrator
(with screenshots) along the example of project managment as knowledge
work.
PDF
- Weak Workflows in FRODO TaskMan
– System Walkthrough and
Evaluation
The presentation comprises the architecture, a system walkthrough (with
screenshots), and results of the TaskMan evaluation
PDF
Publications
Publications
related to weakly-structured workflows and the FRODO TaskMan
2001
Exploiting User and Process Context for Knowledge Management Systems
Ludger van Elst, Andreas Abecker, Heiko Maus
In Workshop on User Modeling for Context-Aware Applications
at the 8th International Conference on User Modeling, Sonthofen, Germany.
(
PDF,
slides )
Anforderungen an
die
Workflow-Unterstützung für wissensintensive
Geschäftsprozesse
Sven
Schwarz, Andreas Abecker, Heiko Maus, Michael Sintek
Workshop
"Geschäftsprozessorientiertes
Wissensmanagement"
im Rahmen der 1. Konferenz
Professionelles Wissensmanagement (WM2001)
vom 14. - 16. März, Baden-Baden
(
PDF )
beide Veröffentlichungen sind als Extended
Abstracts erschienen in
Gerd Stumme, Hans-Peter Schnurr, Steffen
Staab, Rudi Studer, York Sure (Hrsg.)
Professionelles
Wissensmanagement
(ISBN 3-8265-8611-5)
FRODO:
A Framework for Distributed Organizational Memories.
Milestone M1: Requirements Analysis and System Architecture.
Andreas Abecker,
Ansgar. Bernardi, Ludger van
Elst, Andreas Lauer, Heiko Maus, Sven Schwarz, and M.
Sintek.
DFKI
Document D-01-01, DFKI GmbH, March 2001.
Workflow
Context as a Means for Intelligent Information Support
Heiko Maus
in
Springer
LNAI 2116:
V. Akman, P. Bouquet, R. Thomason, R.A. Young (Eds.):
Modeling
and Using Context. Third International and
Interdisciplinary Conference, CONTEXT,
2001, Dundee, UK, July 27-30, 2001. Proceedings
(preliminary
version
, PDF)
(Springer LINK
online version )
conference
page: CONTEXT'01
2002
Artikel
im DFKI
Newsletter zur CeBit'02: FRODO Taskman
Konzepte zur
Gestaltung
von Unternehmensgedächtnissen
Andreas Dengel,
Andreas Abecker, Ansgar Bernardi, Ludger van Elst,
Heiko Maus, Sven Schwarz, Michael Sintek
Zeitschrift KI -
Künstliche Intelligenz , Thema Wissensmanagement, 1/02, S.
5-11.
Abstract.
(Draft,pdf)
2003
FRODO
Abschlussbericht - A Framework for
Distributed Organizational Memories
Andreas Abecker,
Ansgar Bernardi, Ludger van Elst, Andreas Lauer, Heiko
Maus, Michael Sintek, Sven Schwarz
DFKI GmbH, BMBF
FKZ 01 IW901
Weakly-structured
Workflows for Knowledge-intensive Tasks: An Experimental Evaluation
Ludger van Elst,
Felix-Robinson Aschoff, Ansgar Bernardi, Heiko Maus,
Sven Schwarz
in Knowledge
Management for Distributed Agile Processes: Models,
Techniques, and Infrastructure (KMDAP2003)
at WETICE-03
(draft
pdf)
2004
FRODO:
Ein Agentenframework für verteilte Unternehmensgedächtnisse
Ansgar Bernardi,Andreas
Dengel,
Ludger van Elst,
Andreas Lauer, Heiko Maus, Sven Schwarz
Zeitschrift KI -
Künstliche Intelligenz, 3/04, S.
59-61.
Abstract
2005
Leveraging
Passive Paper Piles to Active Objects in Personal Knowledge Spaces
Heiko
Maus,
Harald Holz, Ansgar Bernardi, Oleg Rostanin
In:
Workshop on Intelligent Office Appliances (IOA
2005)
in Proceedings of 3rd
Conference
Professional Knowledge Management: Experiences and Visions,
April
10-13, 2005. ISBN 3-00-016020-5
(slides, draft )
A Lightweight
Approach for Proactive, Task-Specific Information Delivery
Harald Holz,
Heiko Maus, Ansgar Bernardi, Oleg Rostanin
In: Proceedings of I-KNOW '05 - Special
Track on Business Process Oriented Knowledge Infrastructures (BPOKI).
TEAL - Task Embedded Adaptive e-Learning
Oleg Rostanin, Harald Holz
In: Proceedings of I-KNOW '05 - ProLearn workshop on professional learning
(slides)
From Lightweight, Proactive Information Delivery to Business Process-Oriented Knowledge Management
Harald Holz, Heiko Maus, Ansgar Bernardi, Oleg Rostanin
In: Journal of Universal Knowledge Management. Special Issue on
Knowledge Infrastructures for the Support of Knowledge Intensive
Business Processes. Volume 0
/ Issue 2
( issue's webpage , pdf )
2006
Project TEAL: Add
Adaptive e-Learning to your Workflows
Oleg Rostanin, Carsten Ullrich, Harald Holz, Shenwei Song
In Proceedings of the 6th International
Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW
'06) - Special Track IWL
'06
on "Integrating Working and Learning", 6th September, Graz,
Austria, 2006.( pdf )
Task-based Process Know-how Reuse and Proactive Information Delivery in
TaskNavigator
Holz, Harald, Rostanin, Oleg, Dengel, Andreas, Maeda, Kaoru, Suzuki, Takeshi, Kanasaki, Katsumi
In Proc. of the ACM Fifteenth Conference on Information and
Knowledge Management (CIKM 2006), Arlington, USA, pp. 522 - 531, 2006, ISBN:
1-59593-433-2. DOI: 10.1145/1183614.1183689
2007
Workflow-Kontext zur Realisierung prozessorientierter Assistenz in Organisational Memories
Heiko Maus
Ph.D. Thesis/Dissertation, TU Kaiserslautern, 2007. Verlag dissertation.de (Info )
Relations to the predecessor project
KnowMore
The FRODO
TaskMan extends the approach taken in KnowMore.
KnowMore supports workflows with knowledge-intensive tasks enacted within a
workflow activity. KnowMore focussed
on traditional workflow systems (let's say according to WfMC) with strongly-structured
workflows.
There is no issue of flexibility on the workflow level.
Now FRODO introduces the concept of weakly-structured workflows which on the one
hand coveres all
support of knowledge intensive tasks of the KnowMore-scenario.
But, the main focus of the TaskMan is to support
knowledge work whith means of the workflow paradigm:
The FRODO TaskMan allows modification of the workflow during runtime (delete, add, modify
tasks, change the control flow).
Furthermore, detail tasks (by hierarchical decomposition) if needed.
With that approach we get various instances for distinct problems which can be
used in similar tasks as either
information support (what has been done?) or modelling support (how has this been done? Use it!)
The main idea is to provide the knowledge worker a tool where he is able to mange his work as well as
collaboratively work on processeses in a team and evolve process-know-how.
Projects using TaskMan resp. follow-ups
- FRODO (Framework for Distributed Organizational Memories)
- EPOS (Evolving Personal to Organizational Knowledge Spaces)
- TEAL - (Task-embedded Adaptive E-Learning)
- TaskPad
- CC VOF - Competence Center VirtualOffice of the Future - as TaskNavigator and TaskPad
- Ricoh Demoroom see it live as TaskNavigator
- ADIB - (Adaptive Information Support)
last
modified: June 11th, 2008, HM