Task support in an office system

Abstract

The tools in current office systems are designed to carry out simple tasks that are common to most offices. For example, tasks such as communication, time management and document production are supported by the electronic mail, calendar and text editor tools. It has been pointed out that this level of task support is only of limited effectiveness in addressing the problem of office productivity [HAMM79,HAMM80]. A more effective system would support higher-level tasks that are directly related to the goals or functions of the office. This type of task often involves decision-making, complex sequences of actions, and interaction with a number of other people. The crucial feature of these tasks is that, unlike the simple tasks mentioned previously, tasks that more closely implement a particular office's functions must be very office-specific. It will not be possible to provide a generic set of tools to directly support all office tasks. However, it should be possible to “customize” an office system by providing a means of describing the high-level tasks and how they can be supported with the existing set of tools. Descriptions of office tasks are usually called office procedures. Although the name implies that the activities described are very routine and structured, office procedures can also be used to describe more unstructured, management-level tasks. Office procedure formalisms have been used to define and analyse offices [ELLI80,BAIL83], and to automate office tasks [ZISM77]. A description of a task using a procedure formalism is subject to change and represents only a standard or typical way of carrying out that task. A system that uses office procedures to support tasks must provide mechanisms to deal with these limitations of procedures [FIKE80].