Patent 7908549 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on March, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A workflow includes an activity that takes advantage of spreadsheet calculations. For a spreadsheet activity, calculation and extraction of values from a spreadsheet is performed. Thus, spreadsheet calculations are integrated into workflows without user intervention. Values from previous activities in the workflow may be obtained and provided to the spreadsheet (e.g., cell values are set, modified, or adjusted). The spreadsheet may then be recalculated using these obtained values. Moreover, values from the spreadsheet may be used in subsequent parts of the workflow. Also, any number of spreadsheet activities may be incorporated into a workflow, and one spreadsheet activity may provide values to a second spreadsheet activity in the workflow.