Workflow Management Coalition

Newsletter - December 1995






WfMC Unveils Standard Client Application Programming Interface

The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), the non-profit international organization of workflow vendors, customers and analysts unveiled its workflow application programming interface (API) for the support of workflow client applications on November 20, 1995. The workflow API provides a means of communication between workflow client applications and workflow engines to give users increased flexibility in implementing standards-based workflow systems such as insurance claims or purchase order processing.

The Coalition received positive reactions from the media, user organizations and industry analysts.

Chairman Industry Liaison

At the November meeting the Steering Committee approved a proposal to have a Chairman of Industry Liaison. The purpose of this function is to coordinate and synchronize the liaison between other industry organizations, and the various Coalition committees, i.e. TC, Working Groups, ERC and SC. Mike Grabert, was the first officer elected to this position in November.

Meanwhile, Mike has joined another company, and election of a new Chairman will follow soon.

Examples of the liaison with other industry groups, consortia and standard groupings are: the Black Forest Group, Object Management Group, and Document Management Alliance. These groups are supporting the WFMC specifications.

The Chairman will report regularly to the Steering Committee, and will cooperate with the Secretariat to address questions from Members.

New Vice-Chairs Elected

In November the Coalition's progress was shown by the election of several other new positions. In addition, Sunil Sarin, XSoft, was elected Steering Committee Vice-Chairman Americas.

The Vice-Chairmen for the various working groups are now:

Election of WfMC Officers in Progress

Elections for the WFMC officers are taking place at the moment.

Nomination forms have been sent out and should be returned before January 15, 1996. By the end of the day on January 17, the nominations will be distributed to the membership with votes due by January 31.

The results of the election will be distributed at the February meeting. At the February meeting, the newly elected Chairmen will chair the various comittees.

Coalition to Issue Annual Handbook - Call for Papers

The External Relations Committee (ERC) is working on an exciting new project: the publication of an Annual Handbook. The book will contain information about workflow automation products, services and companies, market information and comments from a variety of people involved in workflow.

The publication will be extremely useful for all professionals and companies within the workflow arena, including end-users, vendors, analysts, universities, and resellers.

In order to measure the interest from the membership for contributing to this publication, the Secretariat sent out a preliminary Call for Papers. The high level of response is a sound basis for intended cooperation with the publisher Wiley & Sons.

A more detailed Call for Papers with article guidelines is being issued. Funding members will also be invited to submit a brief company and product/service description for inclusion in the handbook.

Next Meetings Schedule:

The next meeting will be held in Orlando, FL on February 7-9, 1996 following the BIS/Giga conference there on February 4-7.

The Spring meeting which will be sponsored CSE Systems and TIMS Technology will be held in Zurich, Switzerland on May 6-8, 1996.

Working group meetings: WG 1 will meet in Padderborn, Germany on January 11 (sponsored by SNI); the other WGs will meet in Montpellier, Vermont on January 16-18 (sponsored by National Life of Vermont).

After the May meeting, working groups will meet again in Toronto, Canada on June 12-13 (sponsored by Workflow Solutions Group) following Workflow Canada in Toronto on June 9-11.

Next meetings will be held in the US in August and in Europe in November.


For further information or copies of Workflow Management Coalition Publications, contact:

Workflow Management Coalition Office
Attn. Alfons Westgeest or Emmy Botterman
Avenue Marcel Thiry 204,1200 Brussels, Belgium;
Tel: +32 2 774 96 33. Fax: +32 2 774 96 90.
E-Mail: 100113.1555@compuserve.com

See the WfMC Home Page or contact one of the Country Contacts


Last updated: Thu Mar 21 14:23:54 1996 by Austin Tate, AIAI, University of Edinburgh (a.tate@ed.ac.uk)