Patent ID: 8332738

Claim:
A method for enforcing group oriented workflow requirements for multi-layered documents comprising: obtaining by a computer system a current audience identifier wherein said current audience identifier is associated with a current audience; obtaining by said computer system a current audience order defining an order of inheritance for said current audience identifier, wherein said current audience order comprises a first audience identifier associated with a first audience data layer and a second audience identifier associated with a second audience data layer, wherein a current audience data layer consists primarily of attribute values unique to said current audience data layer with respect to said first audience data layer and said second audience data layer; accessing by said computer system a multi-layered data set comprising a plurality of audience layers by said computer system to import data associated with said current audience, wherein said plurality of audience layers are traversed based upon said current audience order and wherein said imported data comprises a subset of data unique to said current audience and an inherited subset of data comprising data inherited from at least one of said first audience data layer and said second audience data layer; applying by said computer system a multi-layered operation on said multi-layered data set, wherein said multi-layered operation comprises searching for a value of an attribute in said current audience data layer, searching for said value in said first audience data layer when said current audience data layer does not contain said value for said attribute, and searching for said value in said second audience data layer when said first audience data layer and said current audience data layer do not contain said value for said attribute; communicating by said computer system a result of said multi-layered operation to a workflow engine; sending a message via said workflow engine to a role based on said result; displaying a first portion of the multi-layered data set along with a first visual representation indicating that the first portion was inherited from the first audience data layer; and displaying a second portion of the multi-layered data set along with a second visual representation indicating that the second portion was inherited from the second audience data layer.