C&S Overview -Reply

[Steve Carter <srcarter@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the effort Peter. Your document will give us all a launching
point for discussion as we move down the path to make Global C&S a
reality.  The following are my comments:

1.  I see three models of C&S connectivity, those that will have server
processes that will work against their calendar store directly (although
the calendar store will in all probability be synchronized with other copies
of the store), those that have a server process that has access to free
time only (again, synchronized with other stores), and those that will
insist on client-only connectivity. While I understand that some will insist
on the client-only model, they will be the least connected as far a C&S is
concerned.  At Novell, our GroupWise product supports the first model in
conjunction with synchronization of multiple calendar stores. I live daily in
this world and have done so for many years. E-mail calendaring is a
natural part of my life.

2.  You hit it right on, resources do indeed need to have an e-mail
address. Each resource, be it a conference room, overhead projector,
etc., must be individually addressable. While an automated agent can
automatically accept and/or reject scheduling requests that conflict with
other, already accepted, requests, the additional attribute of "owner"
must be included. There are times when a resource becomes a critical
resource and some kind of arbitration is necessary. In this case a person
(the owner) must step in and resolve the issue. An example, someone
has already scheduled the conference room with the large presentation
monitors, however, the VP has an important meeting that has just popped
up and needs to preempt the original schedule. The owner works
everything out, makes the changes to the schedule and life goes on.

3.  Your "free time bitmap" is not really a bitmap but rather a datagram.
Even though the datagram can be processed I would push for a free time
list so that more processing options could be available to the chairperson.
GroupWise currently supports free time processing (we call it busy
check). I commonly request free times for all participants and resources
for 21 days (my default) so that I have the data needed to schedule the
meeting sometime within the next three weeks. Because I have a free
time list I can change granularity, days, and time zones without posting
another query. It is also important to allow the chairperson (your term) to
work with partial responses to the free time query. If 9 of the 10 invitees
have responded I can start planning the meeting rather than wait for the
last response (which may or may not come in a timely manner).

4.  Your "direct connect" model is probably more of an issue for a
specific implementation that will support both the C&S standard we are all
working on and some LAN based access mechanism. I doubt that many
calendar stores will be directly accessible on the Internet.

5.  Delegation and Inviting are two functions that will need to be carefully
integrated into the information sent back to the person scheduling the
meeting. If 10 people were invited and the room will hold 12 and 5
additional were "invited", the chairperson needs to know that the
resources scheduled are not sufficient to host the meeting. GroupWise
allows for both "delegation" and "inviting" and makes provision for
notifying the chairperson of the changes. It is also well to note that those
"delegated" or "invited" are not really a part of the original scheduled
event. So, if the event is rescheduled based upon the original schedule,
they must be re-delegated or -invited. I don't know if the work we are
doing to define C&S as a specification can do anything to address this but
we might want to keep it in mind as it reflects one of the several contexts
that meeting schedules are viewed in.

6.  Time zones are a very nasty problem when it comes to scheduling a
meeting. Some of the participants may be attending at one of several
scheduled rooms (resources) that may be connected via teleconference,
others may be bridged in from their desk. This may involve some people
traveling and thus "changing" their time zone context. When accepting a
meeting it would be well to allow the person to define the time zone
context. This context may change over time so everything should be
relative to the latest declared context.

7.  Proxy access to remote calendar stores via the Internet would be a
very nice touch. Without positive identity authentication it will never
happen. C&S really needs the pkix and other security initiatives to move
forward and provide a security infrastructure. Without it we will continue
to see proxy access relegated to LAN mechanisms. GroupWise provides
for both local and remote proxy access to the message and calendar
store, however, it is based on a proprietary security infrastructure. For
C&S we need to watch the pkix WG and give them input (as well as the
W3C Digital Signature Initiative).

8.  I agree with the need to have multiple calendar stores. To make it
practical, however, we need to specify the ability to OR several stores
together so that an overall schedule can be viewed. This also impacts
busy search because we will need to get free time from several stores
based on one user id (e.g., srcarter@novell.com).

9.  The preceding issue brings up the directory. I see this as one of the
biggest problems we will face. The ability to easily register multiple
calendar stores for a given user id is critical. Effortless look-up is even
more important.

Again, thanks for the paper. It provided a place for me to hang the several
ideas, thoughts, and concerns I have been having as I've worked through
the various C&S proposals.  I look forward to participating as we move
forward.

-src
Steve Carter
srcarter@novell.com
GroupWare Division

>>> "Peter O'Leary" <poleary@clearblue.com> 08/27/96 08:54pm >>>
Folks,

I have written an overview of C&S functionality as a kind of "road map"
for the work that I think (IMNSHO) needs to be done in order to define
C&S standards. Basically I just dumped as much as I could think of on
paper and drew a few pictures to help illustrate. Some areas of the
document are more informed than others; please give me your feedback
about additional requirements, clarifications, etc. Also, please let me
know if you find this useful and would like for me to continue working
on it.

http://www.clearblue.com/CSOverview.htm

Cheers,

Pete.