CONVERSATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ENTERPRISE WIDE ELECTRONIC COLLABORATION

摘要

An enterprise wide electronic commerce system allows trading partners to act as participants in a complex trading process. Participants communicate with one another by joining conversations that are hosted in a collaboration space and managed by a collaboration hub. In this manner, the enterprise workflow may have an effect on, or be affected by, local workflows. The invention provides a conversation management system for enterprise wide electronic collaboration. The conversation is first started or initiated (234) by an initiator (232). The conversation then enters an active phase (236). A conversation may end by any of three means - either the conversation is aborted (238), perhaps due to error, or a change in conversation criteria; timed-out (240) due to the conversation period extending beyond its scheduled timeframe; or terminated due to the conversation having achieved its end result (242). An embodiment of the invention includes a conversation manager for managing the flow of messages in a collaboration system, comprising a conversation initiation mechanism for initiating a conversation a participation registration mechanism for registering participants in a conversation, and a conversation repository for storing conversation management data.