BizTalk Server 2004 Human Workflow Services

BizTalk Server 2004 Human Workflow Services (HWS) takes advantage of the BizTalk Server engine (which includes orchestration and messaging components) to manage workflow business logic and exchange information among workflow participants. HWS uses the HWS administration database (bottom left) to store configuration information such as Activity Models, which developers create to specify the sequence of business activities (called “actions”) that make up a workflow, and the constraints governing which workers can activate or be targeted by those actions. A separate tracking database stores real-time state information about workflows in progress.

A middle-tier layer provides services that clients access through a Web services interface. These include a service for discovering available Activity Models; the composition service, which starts and adds actions to running workflows; a constraint service that is used to check the rules governing use of actions; and a tracking service that gathers information about the state of running workflows from the HWS tracking database.