US Patent 7774359 Business alerts on process instances based on defined conditions

System and method for notifying a user of an occurrence of a defined condition in a process. The process includes a plurality of event records associated with the process; each of the plurality of event records includes a plurality of data fields having data relating to the process. A subset of the plurality of event records is defined where the subset relates to the defined condition. The data in the defined subset is updated at a predetermined time interval. The user is notified when the updated data of the defined subset indicates that the defined condition has occurred. The subset may alternatively be defined as a function of a current time, a last run time and the defined condition.