RE: Free/Busy Issues

[Alec Dun <AlecDu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> ----------
> From: 	Philippe[SMTP:philippe@philippe.com]
> Sent: 	Sunday, February 16, 1997 11:27 PM
> To: 	Steve Silverberg (Exchange)
> Cc: 	ietf-calendar@imc.org
> Subject: 	Re: Free/Busy Issues
> 
> 
> We agree with Steve's message: There is a functional need that we must
> address. -Starfish-
> 
> 
> At 19:47 16/02/97 -0800, Steve Silverberg (Exchange) wrote:
> >	Maybe I'm missing something, but one of the issues that appears
> >not to be addressed in this working group is real-time access to
> >free/busy information. Most calendaring/scheduling programs
> (including
> >ours) include the notion of a planner.  The planner is typically a
> Gantt
> >chart view of users' free/busy.  Typically, it is derived from a
> shared
> >file or database, but stored separately as a free/busy bitmap for
> >performance and security reasons.  (At least that's the way Schedule+
> >and Outlook do it, I'm guessing that this would be a common
> >implementation.)   The free/busy database is then updated on a
> periodic
> >basis. The important feature from a customer perspective is the
> ability
> >to schedule a meeting with complete and up-to-date knowledge of
> >attendees' free/busy.
> >
> >	After reading through the various documents in this working
> >group, it appears the only way to obtain free/busy data is to make a
> >free/busy request using the free/busy Request profile. This is
> clearly
> >not sufficient to support a planner-style feature for a number of
> >reasons.  One, this doesn't work at all over SMTP: what would you do,
> >open up a window, send out a request, and wait indefinitely for
> replies
> >to the free/busy request, and have to correlate the replies back to
> the
> >open window in real time?  
> 
Check out the CIP and the CIH drafts.  They both handle real-time
free/busy lookup.

> Two, the iCal format is pretty verbose;
> >though you could derive free/busy info and represent it as a bitmap,
> it
> >would be very slow, almost certainly unacceptably slow.
> 
Agreed, although sometimes you want a verbose response so you can do
smart things for example, filter out people who are already attending a
meeting you want to move.  We're looking at creating a "terse free/busy"
info profile in addition to the verbose on.

> >
> >	I think it's pretty important to allow this functionality with
> >the iCal standard but I don't see a way to do it given the current
> spec.
> >What do others think?  If there's a consensus that this is important
> >functionality to support, then we'd be willing to post a proposed
> spec
> >for how to do free/busy within the current iCal framework.
> >______________________________________
> >Steve Silverberg
> >Microsoft Outlook Program Management
> >Mailto: Stevesil@Microsoft.com
> >
> >
> 
> 
> Philippe Kahn     Starfish Software, Inc.
> http://www.starfishsoftware.com
> philippe@philippe.com
> Pager 800-841-9668
> Voice 408-461-5850
>