This metadata is useful to the actor independently of the activity itself. Since most actors will have many activities allocated to them, some sort of Intray is required, listing outstanding activities and allowing selection of the next. Access to metadata, such as DueDate, is clearly essential to prioritize selections. The list provided by the Web server uses RDF to record the metadata about each of the activities. The Intray page, or more precisely, scripts in the page then use this RDF to display a scrollable list of the activities, highlighting overdue items.
Further scripts allow the actor to sort and filter the list without going back to the Web server.
By stopping the mouse pointer over a list item, the full metadata for that activity can be displayed in a popup window. Activity Pages Clicking on an activity in the intray indicates to the workflow engine that the actor intends to work on that activity. A new Activity page is created using an XML description of the activity sent by the Web server. The Activity page displays the Activity instructions and data, and if appropriate connects the 'Go ' button to the required application. When the actor is finished, clicking the 'done ' button causes the results form to popup.