1. A computer system for managing a plurality of business processes, each business process having a business process definition with a plurality of linked workflows, each workflow having a corresponding workflow definition, said workflow definition representing commitments that a user having a predetermined role makes and completes to satisfy a customer of the workflow comprising: a) workflow server means for providing services to workflow enabled applications that allow users to act taking one of a plurality of available acts defined in one of said business processes, said workflow server means including a transaction manager providing for each of said business processes: transaction services for 1. receiving instructions to initiate and initiating workflows of said business processes; 2. taking actions in said workflow initiated business processes; 3. updating and maintaining workflow status after each act is taken in each of said initiated workflows of said business process and keeping track of pending workflow activities, wherein said taken act is one of an act of a user and an act automatically taken by the transaction manager based on said business process definition and said workflow definition of a predetermined one of said workflows of said business process, wherein said workflow status represents all acts that are pending for said user having a predetermined role in said initiated workflow; 4. making available to said workflow enabled applications available business processes that a predetermined one of said workflow enabled applications can initiate and specifying available acts that a user of said predetermined workflow enabled application can take in each of the initiated workflows of each of the available business processes; b) database means for storing records of business process transactions.