NEPOMUK Deliverable D3.1: Task management model

NEPOMUK Deliverable D3.1: Task management model

Executive Summary

The Social Semantic Desktop as developed in Nepomuk shall realize a comprehensive work environment for the knowledge worker.

This document describes the Task Management Model, which provides the fundamental representation for a structured modelling and handling of personal workload and individual activities. Motivated by our understanding of the semantic desktop as a predominantly personal tool, the task management model has to support a variety of usage scenarios, ranging from the personal ad-hoc annotation of an arbitrary information item as being somehow tied to an activity to-be-performed to the highly formalized representation of tasks as data elements within a distributed collaborative workflow application. This wide range of scenarios results in some guiding principles for the further development, which specify the expected benefits and the constraints to be considered, both from the individual and from the organisation’s point of view.

Task modelling has been investigated for various purposes and from different viewpoints. Main approaches include the individual activity modelling, the coordination theory focussing on multiple actors, the unified activity management which generically represents human collaborative activities, and individual task and to-do list managers. A comprehensive review of the state of the art describes and discusses these approaches and coordinates with the requirements identified within the Nepomuk case studies.

Nepomuk’s task management shall support a variety of operations on tasks. Personal aspects – annotating information as task-related, handling to-do lists, managing deadlines, structuring information resources etc. – are combined with and extended by organizational and collaboration aspects and evolved towards knowledge management aspects. The conceptual task management model describes the principle elements (concepts and relations) and functionalities considered by Nepomuk.

Finally, the Nepomuk task management model is defined as a set of concept definitions. Used as a data model (or domain ontology), this model offers the various data types and their properties which are needed to realize the intended functionalities. In accordance with the broad range of intended applications, most properties defined so far are considered optional, thus leaving room for very lightweight personal applications. On the other hand, further details and increased formality can always be realized by introducing new subclasses to the objects defined here.

In summary, the Nepomuk task management model offers the formal specification of the concepts and relations, which will allow to handle all data necessary to support task-related operations within the social semantic desktop, both in the personal as well as in interconnected and organizational settings.