Internet technology to run workflows

The existing, and still evolving, Internet technologies have, up to now, only been used for paper‐free distribution and hypermedia presentation of electronic documents. But today’s business and research often require more ‐ the compilation of knowledge worked out asynchronously by different distributed knowledge holders. This is in general connected with diverse review and revise processes. Owing to awkward paper‐based information flows lacking in control, this task is often characterized by exceptionally lengthy, spontaneous, unsystematic work, high error frequency and lack of transparency, which results in a lack of quality. Coming from the initial goal of supporting a process‐oriented management of distributed editorial work in the publishing sector ‐ which is analogous to the problem outlined above ‐ INTERFYS is an innovative Internet‐based system concept for making such processes more efficient by applying the concepts of workflow management using Web technologies only. With INTERFYS not only the distribution and presentation, but also the creation process of documents is supported using Internet technologies only. The paper explains and evaluates the conceptual and technical aspects of the System INTERFYS 1.0 which has just been realized and was presented on the CeBIT 1998 in Hanover.