METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR BUILDING BUSINESS PROCESS APPLICATIONS IN TERMS OF ITS WORKFLOWS

The invention is a method and system which provides consultants, business process analysts, and application developers with a unified tool with which to conduct business process analysis, design, documentation and to generate business process definitions and workflow-enabled applications. The invention may be implemented using a software system which has two functional sets. One is a set of graphical tools that can be used by a developer or business analyst to map out business processes. The second is a set of tools that can be used to document and specify in detail the attributes of each workflow definition, including roles, cycle time, conditions, of satisfaction, cost and value, associated text, forms, application data as well as detail the attributes of links between workflows required to complete a business process map, and to generate a business process definition and a workflow-enabled application. In this manner, the invention provides the capability of performing application generation and generation of business process definitions in a definitions database. The invention also includes a workflow language scripting capability.