Advanced CAMP: Workflow Models and Technologies

Workflow at its simplest is the movement of documents, tasks, data and/or objects through a work process. By its nature workflow is tightly coupled with collaboration. Workflow considers how tasks are structured, who or what can perform tasks, what their relative order is, and how they are synchronized. These concepts have been applied to business domains and scientific domains.

Workflow can be used to facilitate provisioning tasks associated with identity management, virtual organizations and intra-organizational collaboration. By further integrating workflow with other middleware components, workflow enabled systems can be extended across traditional boundaries.

Use cases include job submissions to grid resources, learning management systems, processing data sets through different classifiers, or processing of purchase or service agreements across multiple organizations. These usage patterns demand a presence of middleware so that a common understanding of the authorizations can flow across the disparate systems.

The Advanced CAMP: Workflow Models and Technologies provides a chance for attendees to explore the requirements, models, and needs for workflow in a highly interactive setting. The sessions will 

• cover the security usage patterns in workflow, including the role of document digital signatures,
• examine emerging technologies, including web services, associated with workflow,
• discuss current and ongoing deployments in higher education and
• explore how middleware such as directory services, Signet, Grouper, and Shibboleth projects can be enhanced by workflow and could be used to facilitate the use of workflow deployments in your organization.

Attendees should have an in-depth knowledge and experience with implementing identity management. Attendees who would find the most value from these sessions include central campus IT strategists, technology architects, and related leadership.

CAMP is sponsored by the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative-Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies (NMI-EDIT) Consortium: Internet2 and EDUCAUSE. Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation OCI-0330626. For information about NMI-EDIT and participation in the NSF Middleware Initiative, see www.nmi-edit.org.