Patent ID: 8429668

Claim:
An article comprising a non-transitory tangible machine-readable medium embodying instructions that when performed by one or more machines result in operations comprising: identifying an occurrence of a workflow re-evaluation event during execution of tasks in a workflow under the control of a workflow management system, the workflow re-evaluation event being an exception execution state that does not comply with standard execution of the workflow, the workflow management system comprising a rules inference engine to control automation of the workflow; suspending all active tasks in the workflow; determining, for each task previously executed in the workflow, whether each such task needs to be executed again based on the identified occurrence of the workflow re-evaluation event, the determining comprising associating, by the rules inference engine using data and control conditions associated with the workflow re-evaluation event, each task with one or more re-evaluation rules, each rule specifying a pre-condition to execute the corresponding task and a post-condition after the task is successfully executed; and determining, using the rules inference engine, whether each task needs to be executed again based on the associated re-evaluation rules; executing again those tasks in the workflow for which it was determined that the task needs to be executed again, the executing using contextual information from previously performed task; executing suspended active tasks in the workflow for which it was determined that the task needs to be executed again; skipping those tasks in the workflow that were previously executed and for which it was not determined that the task needs to be executed again, wherein at least one skipped task occurs subsequent to a task executed again in the workflow; and canceling any suspended active task upon completion of the workflow.