Example of a lightweight workflow that the OS would ideally support

Work at the computer often requires the user to undertake repetitive patterns of actions. So there's an implicit workflow to the user's activities. Ideally, the Operating System (OS) would support such workflows, to lessen the amount of repetitive busywork the user needs to do.

Here's an example of the kind of lightweight workflow I'd like an OS to be able to support. I'll leave questions of how such workflows could be supported to future posts.

This workflow is from a university tutoring job, where I was marking some assessments. (For my own reference, these were weekly labs in a database subject at JCU).

There was a spreadsheet with assessment-related information (like listings of each tutor's students), an online system (Blackboard) that students submitted their assessments to and to which their marks were added, and I kept a notes file where I kept a copy of my feedback on assessments before uploading them along with the marks.

For each of my students in the spreadsheet, I would

1. copy their name from the spreadsheet
2. paste their name as heading in my notes file
3. search for their name in Blackboard
4. click on the link for their submitted assessment
5. scroll down to the bottom of the page
6. click on the relevant items to download their assessment
7. open that assessment (e.g. in Microsoft Word)
8. check their assessment against the solution I'd printed out
9. write my feedback in the notes file
10. go back to the Blackboard page for the student's assessment, enter their mark, and copy and paste my feedback from my notes file.
11. click on the 'x's on that page multiple times to get back to the list of the student assessments
12. that listing will have scrolled back to the top of the list, so I'd have to find the student name's again
13. click on the link next to the student's name to post their mark, and click the confirmation
14. go back to the spreadsheet and note down that I've completed marking off this student.

These tasks involved so much switching between applications. Many of the steps involved moving the mouse pointer to a particular place on the screen. So much of the activity was: switch to this app, for step X, move the mouse pointer to the place for step X, do one or more actions, switch to this other app, move the mouse pointer to the place for the next step (or the net part of the current step), and so on. There was much repetitive tedium. There has to be a better way.

Of course, it would be possible to write a single application that encapsulates this entire process and which streamlines it all. But there is a general need to support workflows that involve multiple different applications, like in this case, and the question I have is, how can such workflows be best supported on the Operating System level?