Describing changes in a workflow based on changes in structured documents containing workflow metadata

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11468229-B2
Application number	US-202015930369-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 12, 2020
Priority date	May 12, 2020
Publication date	Oct 11, 2022
Grant date	Oct 11, 2022

Abstract

A method performed by an electronic device includes retrieving, from a first computing environment, a first set of structured documents that contains metadata for a first version of a workflow to be performed by a workflow engine, the first version of the workflow including a first set of workflow elements. The method further including retrieving, from a second computing environment, a second set of structured documents. The method determines whether a rule is to be applied, based on one but not both of the first and second sets of structured documents including at least one section for a workflow element having a type to which the rule applies, and generating a description of a change in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method performed by an electronic device, the method comprising:
retrieving, from a first computing environment, a first set of structured documents that contains metadata for a first version of a workflow to be performed by a workflow engine, the first version of the workflow including a first set of workflow elements, where each workflow element in the first set of workflow elements represents a respective operation having a respective type of a plurality of types, wherein the operation defines an action or decision to be performed by the workflow engine;
retrieving, from a second computing environment, a second set of structured documents that contains metadata for a second version of the workflow, the second version of the workflow including a second set of workflow elements that differs from the first set of workflow elements, where each workflow element in the second set of workflow elements represents a respective operation having a respective type of the plurality of types, wherein the operation defines an action or decision to be performed by the workflow engine; and
processing a rule of a plurality of rules, the processing including:
determining whether the rule is to be applied, based on one but not both of the first and second sets of structured documents including at least one section for a workflow element representing a first operation of a first type, of the plurality of types, to which the rule applies,
responsive to determining that the rule is to be applied, applying the rule to the first and second sets of structured documents to generate a description of a change in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow; and
generating a description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow based on the descriptions generated by the applied rule.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the description of changes relates to differences between the first and second sets of workflow elements.

3. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprising:
processing another rule of the plurality of rules, the processing another rule including:
determining whether the another rule is to be applied, based on one but not both of the first and second sets of structured documents including at least one section for a workflow element representing a second operation of a second type, of the plurality of types, to which the another rule applies, and
responsive to determining that the another rule is to be applied, applying the another rule to the first and second sets of structured documents to generate another description of a change in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow, wherein the description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow is an aggregation of the descriptions generated by the rule and the another rule.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second version of the workflow is a modified version of the first version of the workflow.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow is a textual description.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
causing to be presented to a user, via a graphical user interface, the description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first set of structured documents includes a different number of documents than the second set of structured documents.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining whether the rule is to be applied is further based on whether one or more filenames of the structured documents of the first and second sets of structured documents satisfy a regular expression.

9. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, when executed by a processor, are capable of causing the processor to perform operations comprising:
retrieving, from a first computing environment, a first set of structured documents that contains metadata for a first version of a workflow to be performed by a workflow engine, the first version of the workflow including a first set of workflow elements, where each workflow element in the first set of workflow elements represents a respective operation having a respective type of a plurality of types, wherein the operation defines an action or decision to be performed by the workflow engine;
retrieving, from a second computing environment, a second set of structured documents that contains metadata for a second version of the workflow, the second version of the workflow including a second set of workflow elements that differs from the first set of workflow elements, where each workflow element in the second set of workflow elements represents a respective operation having a respective type of the plurality of types, wherein the operation defines an action or decision to be performed by the workflow engine; and
processing a rule of a plurality of rules, the processing including:
determining whether the rule is to be applied, based on one but not both of the first and second sets of structured documents including at least one section for a workflow element representing a first operation of a first type, of the plurality of types, to which the rule applies,
responsive to determining that the rule is to be applied, applying the rule to the first and second sets of structured documents to generate a description of a change in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow; and
generating a description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow based on the descriptions generated by the applied rule.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the description of changes relates to differences between the first and second sets of workflow elements.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , that further provides instructions that, when executed by the processor, are capable of causing said processor to perform further operations comprising:
processing another rule of the plurality of rules, the processing another rule including:
determining whether the another rule is to be applied, based on one but not both of the first and second sets of structured documents including at least one section for a workflow element representing a second operation of a second type, of the plurality of types, to which the another rule applies, and
responsive to determining that the another rule is to be applied, applying the another rule to the first and second sets of structured documents to generate another description of a change in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow, wherein the description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow is an aggregation of the descriptions generated by the rule and the another rule.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the second version of the workflow is a modified version of the first version of the workflow.

13. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the description of changes in the second version of the workflow relative to the first version of the workflow is a textual description.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , that further provides instructions that, w

Assignees

• Salesforce Com Inc

Inventors

• Chen Nicholas Chun Yuan
• Murnock Jr George John
• Olson Michael Christopher
• Fidelak Karen

Classifications

• G06F40/197 Primary

  Version control (for software G06F8/71) · CPC title

• G06F40/14 Primary

  Tree-structured documents (parsing G06F40/205; validation G06F40/226) · CPC title

• G06F40/186

  Templates · CPC title

• G06F40/166

  Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting · CPC title