This report investigates a particular way in which enterprise portals can support the working life of their users. Through monitoring a user's behaviour and observing archetypal sequences of actions, the system constructs abstract templates of tools that assist him to carry out such sequences efficiently and easily in the future. We call these new tools "wizards" after the utilities introduced by Microsoft into their applications and operating systems, designed to guide users through potentially complex tasks such as constructing graphs in Excel or setting up the computer to access the Internet.

At the heart of the process lies a re-programmable rule-base that encodes the principles by which action records are to be assembled into intelligible generic patterns of working practice, and thence converted into templates of new wizard tools that provide direct support for those patterns.