Patent ID: 8655709

Claim:
A method carried out by a computer system for designing a business process management system for process brokering and content aggregation in collaborative e-commerce comprising the steps of: establishing an information model, an organization model, and a business process model in the computer system, wherein the information model characterizes underlying data structures used by the business process management system, the organization model organizes users of the business process management system according to corresponding business roles, and the business process model characterizes business events received or generated by the business process management system; from the information model and the business process model, selecting Adaptive Documents (ADOCs) in the business process management system using the computer system, wherein an ADOC links content aggregated from various data sources to business processes and the users, and dynamically exposes a set of business services to a given one of the users based on a role of the given user and a process context, and a Process Broker Services interface redirects a business event from a client to an ADOC, and an ADOC controller acts on the business event based on a state of the business event and a content of the business event; based on business events and prerequisites of the business events, designing ADOC state machines using the computer system; based on processing rules associated with the business events, selecting commands that need to be executed as part of state transitions using the computer system; when processing rules dictate collaboration with user or software agents in the business process management system, establishing macro flows using the computer system, wherein the macro flows are directed graphs that establish relationships between activities of the agents that correspond to nodes in the directed graphs; and defining, using activity controllers in the computer system, micro flow used to complete the activities that correspond to nodes in the directed graphs, with a state machine modeling behavior of the activity controllers and commands effecting behavior of the activity controllers.