Ontology-mediated integration of intranet Web services

The recent adoption of XML-based Web services standards has further integrated distributed resources with open Internet protocols at the software service level. Developers are moving beyond simply extending Web resource access and are making a sustained effort to tap into the depth of mutual understanding that can be culled from the Web's diverse content. Ultimately, they will organize this information conceptually and place it in the semantic Web's framework. For end users, the vast increase in available services these initiatives provide can imply either more freedom or more chaos. This flood of options raises the vital issue of how emerging technologies can help to automate the manual operations individual applications require. The smart office task automation framework uses Web services, an ontology, and agent components to create an integrated information-service platform that provides user-centric support for automating intranet office tasks.