I have this fantasy about workflow systems where what gets passed from one worker to the next is the electronic equivalent of a 3x5 Task Card. It contains a brief description of the next task and "Document Numbers" for the documents you need to do the task. Some of those documents might be electronic, in which case the system that receives the 3x5 card can also retrieve and display the documents. Some of the documents might be paper, so the worker who gets the task will have to go fetch the documents themselves.
Users might hit a "get next" button to get the next Task Card in their electronic queue, or they might pull a paper document from their paper queue with a document number. In the latter case they'd have to retrieve the Task Card via a search by
doc number. When someone completes one task they might route the Task Card or document to someone else, or call the job done and throw it away.
It's important (to me) that the workflow subsystem only know about 3x5
cards, not any kind of documents. It's up to a client system to retrieve the card and interpret the document numbers.
Any of those ideas help?
BTW: The only paperless environment I've ever seen is Star Trek TNG.
[ November 07, 2004: Message edited by: Stan James ]