CONTEXT-SENSITIVE OFFICE TASKS - A GENERATIVE APPROACH

Organizational knowledge is one of the most important aspects in office systems. Supporting task processing in the office domain can be viewed as organizational Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). We describe three layers for modeling and processing office tasks: Conventional systems have predefined static models representing a structured task plan. The generation of a task plan at starting time can take into account the actual context giving simpler and more adequate plans. Techniques from traditional office automation are combined with inference mechanisms and Artificial Intelligence techniques for knowledge-based information systems. This approach is described in detail. In the third, most flexible approach, called 'acting by opportunity', the office worker has the possibility to perform actions independently from a task plan. The task processing system has to update the generated task plan according to user-driven deviations.