Patent ID: 8095411

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for processing procedures, comprising: associating, using a computer, actions with the procedures and resources with the actions; generating, by a computer, an action order indicating whether two or more of the actions are to be performed in an order-dependent manner or in an order-independent manner; presenting a list of the actions on a display to a user; receiving, by a computer, a user-entered command to perform at least one of the actions using the resources associated with the actions; displaying, on a display device, entries indicating status information of procedures, wherein at least one of the displayed entries is marked with a pending-flag to alert the user that the procedure associated with the marked entry has a pending action that has not been completed and that a next action depends on the completion of the pending action; and receiving, by a computer, a user-entered command to link at least one of the procedures to at least one pre-existing procedure definition such that subsequent modifications made to the linked procedure definition after linking are automatically reflected in the linked procedure.