Process Monitor: Detecting Events That Didn't Happen

The successful operation of a large scale enterprise information system relies, in part, on the regular and successful completion of many different tasks. Some of these tasks may be fully automated, while others are done manually. One of the challenges we face is detecting when one of these tasks fails (often silently) or is forgotten. While you will eventually learn of these omissions, it is much better to have the system detect them rather than your users! This paper discusses how we implemented a system that watches what we do and reminds us when we (or our computers) forgot to do something.