Definition and management of procedures in a distributed environment

A procedure management system and methods for its operation are disclosed. The methods disclosed include the ability to capture procedure definitions in the system, to improve on the procedure content by associating feedback and comments with the procedure definitions, and to store these procedure definitions in a database. Additional disclosures include the ability to display and interactively use the procedures, to track and record status of each step outcome of the procedure and to suspend and later resume a procedure run. In addition, methods are disclosed that enable the user of a procedure to be notified of any changes that have occurred in a procedure definition since it was last used. Other embodiments include methods that allow users to audit the procedure definition and outcome information. In addition, a procedure authoring tool is disclosed, which enables version tracking of procedure definitions and tracks what has changed between each version.