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In recent years, workflow technology has been widely used in business process management. With the increased complexity, uncertainty and risks in business operations, workflow monitoring is gaining growing attention in business process controlling and supervision. However, monitoring functions provided in traditional workflow systems lack flexibility, and provide little support for managing complex and dynamical changes in business process. In this paper, we propose a novel workflow monitoring approach, in which various intelligent agents work together to perform flexible monitoring tasks in an autonomous and collaborative way. By using customized monitoring plan and proactive monitoring process, the workflow monitoring activities can be executed flexibly and efficiently. The application of intelligent agents for such flexible, adaptive and collaborative workflow monitoring is investigated through an intelligent monitoring system in securities trading.

Workflow management is a promising technology aiming at the automation of business processes to improve the speed and efficiency of an organization. In recent years, workflow management systems (WfMS) have been widely used in business process controlling and monitoring. With the increased complexity, uncertainty and risk in business operations, there is an increased demand on flexible and dynamic workflow management [4]. Workflow monitoring, an important function in workflow management systems, has gained growing attention in business process management. The historical data of workflow instance execution provide a valuable source for active monitoring of the current state or performance of workflow instances. However, monitoring functions provided in traditional workflow systems lack choices and flexibility to deliver relevant information to appropriate persons. In Workflow Reference Model provided by the Workflow Management Coalition, standard monitoring APIs are defined to enable the analysis of automated business processes through the analysis of the logged audit trail data [25]. However, such API supports monitoring solutions limited to a few built-in options and process-relevant events, and there are some problems such as information overloaded or information not delivered exactly to the user who need it [1]. In this paper, we propose a flexible workflow monitoring approach, in which a society of intelligent agents work autonomously and collaboratively to perform monitoring tasks. Agent technology with its properties of autonomy, reactivity, and pro-activity provides an extension and alternative to business process management. By the aid of intelligent agents, our system can execute customized monitoring tasks for different users based on their individual monitoring requests. Furthermore, with the proactive property of intelligent agents, the monitoring process can be adjusted based on the information generated during monitoring activities. By using customized monitoring plan and proactive monitoring process, the workflow monitoring activities can be executed flexibly and efficiently. The application of intelligent agents for such flexible and adaptive workflow monitoring is investigated through an intelligent monitoring system in securities trading. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the relevant literatures in workflow management, intelligent agents, and other related fields. Section 3 illustrates our intelligent monitoring approach that consists in customized monitoring plan and proactive monitoring process. Based on this approach, an example of intelligent monitoring system for securities trading is elaborated in Section 4. In this section, possible errors occurring in securities trading are discussed; a multi-agent framework for monitoring of securities trading is proposed, as well as the agent hierarchy with their communication and collaboration in monitoring activities. Finally, Section 5 concludes with some advantages and limitations of our agents supported workflow monitoring approach.

With the increased complexity, uncertainty and risks in business operations, workflow monitoring, an important issue in workflow management, has gained growing attention in business process controlling. The major contribution of this paper is the novel architecture of intelligent agents supported flexible and dynamic workflow monitoring. Intelligent agents are designed to provide a number of advanced functionalities for workflow monitoring, such as flexible monitoring plan, proactive monitoring process, and collaboration in monitoring activities. By using customized monitoring plan, agents can execute customized monitoring tasks based on individual monitoring requests from users. With the proactive property of intelligent agents, the monitoring process can be adjusted based on the information from monitoring activities. Through the deployment of a society of agents, complex monitoring tasks can be decomposed and performed in an autonomous and collaborative way. However, the flexibility of our monitoring approach is limited to the monitoring skeletons and monitoring options pre-defined in the system. The future work is to seek more flexibility and adaptability in workflow monitoring for increasingly dynamic business process management.