Workflows in a Dashboard: A New Generation of Usability

Abstract

In the last 20 years quite a few mature workflow engines and workflow editors have been developed to support communities in managing workflows. While there is a trend followed by the providers of workflow engines to ease the creation of workflows tailored to their specific workflow system, the management tools still often necessitate much understanding of the workflow concepts and languages. This paper describes the approach targeting various workflow systems and building a single user interface for editing and monitoring workflows under consideration of aspects such as optimization and provenance of data. The design allots agile Web frameworks and novel technologies to build a workflow dashboard offered in a web browser and connecting seamlessly to available workflow systems and external resources like Cloud infrastructures. The user interface eliminates the need to become acquainted with diverse layouts. Thus, the usability is immensely increased for various aspects of managing workflows.