Enterprise applications often involve complex and large-scale workflow processes with a long life span, involving a large set of applications and actors. In many cases, some parts of well established workflow processes could be reused to support new applications. This becomes a real need if new processes are formed across boundaries of collaborating organizations. The new processes will draw heavily on internal procedures and will have to connect tightly to inward facing workflows in each organization. A systematic approach to the reuse of parts of processes is however lacking. The paper will explain how the Project Window (PW) metaphor can be applied to the general cases of process segmentation and re-connection. From a process point of view, the PW approach presents the challenge of selecting process segments that form the workflow process of new enterprise applications and data flows. The solution presented in this paper will be shown to have special significance for the development of emerging e-Business applications in AEC. In particular, the paper will deal with an extension of WFM (Workflow Management) principles, enabling the definition of so-called external process views. This concept is similar to the concept of external data views of database applications, which supports that applications are based on selected parts of a conceptual data schema. Petri nets will be used for the analysis and explicit derivation of external process views.
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