1

Workflow Systems at APNICHow they help everyone

Robert Loomans <robertl@apnic.net>

February 2, 2007

2

Contents

• What is a “workflow”?

• What is a “workflow system”?

• Why care?

• Workflows at APNIC

• Workflow systems at APNIC

• Where to from here?

• Summary

• Resources

3

What is a “workflow”?

• Data

• State or Context

• Process…or Business Process

4

Process

5

What is a “workflow system”?

• Workflow model– Data store– Workflow definition– Programming API

• Workflow engine– Execution– Remote API?

• Modeling and analysis tools

6

Why care?

• Structured development– Decouple different layers– More modular, reusable code– More definition and declaration

• More manageable operations– Less random cronjobs– Less scary direct poking in databases or files– Potential for better logging, stats and audit

trails– Privileged code running in one place– Access control

7

Really, why care?

• Faster responses from APNIC and much better worst case

• Quicker fixes to broken processes

• More automation of common tasks

8

Hype

Source: The State of Workflow by Tom Baeyens

9

Workflows at APNIC

• External– New membership– Resource application– Help!– Membership renewal– Lame DNS delegations– Policy drafting

• Internal– Travel and leave requests– Expense claims– Purchasing– Software feature requests and bugs

10

Workflow systems at APNIC

• Web forms Email– No structure

• Request Tracker

• Ad-hoc applications

• Workflow.pm

11

Email

• Trail of email messages

• Spam

• Little or no metadata

12

Request Tracker

• Email gateway

• Spam

• Limited metadata

• Difficult to impose business processes

13

Ad-hoc applications

• Slow development cycle

• Duplicated bugs

• Proliferation of cronjobs on multiple servers

• Difficult to change

14

Workflow.pm

• Simple Perl module on CPAN

• Not a separate WFE

• XML workflow definition– States– Actions– Conditions

• Works but immature

15

Billing renewal notifications

• Notices to members asking them to pay up

• Were done manually from an Excel spreadsheet

16

17

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

18

How successful?

• Very– Happy finance staff– Happy software staff– Happy ops staff

• Found problems with existing data and processes

19

Where to from here?

• Extend member workflow

• More workflows

• Workflow engine– Java, .NET or PHP– jBPM http://www.jboss.com/products/jbpm– OpenWFE http://www.openwfe.org/– con:cern http://con-cern.org/

20

Resources

• The State of Workflow - Tom Baeyens http://www.jboss.com/products/jbpm/stateofworkflow

• Process Management Standards Overview - Michael zur Muehlen http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/Process_Management_Standards_files/frame.htm

• Open Source Workflow Engines in Java http://www.java-source.net/open-source/workflow-engines

21

Summary

• Useful? Yes!

• Lots more to do, but definitely worthwhile even in a simple form

22

Questions?