[chandler-users] Intelligent Event Scheduling

[Katie Capps Parlante]

Hi Alan,

Alan Mandel wrote:
> I really appreciate the response, though I'm not sure what this means 
> about the prospects of such a feature showing up in, say, Chandler 1.0.  

The truth is, we don't know yet what features the OSAF team will 
implement for a 1.0 (beyond Preview -- we understand Preview features 
pretty well!). We have some pretty strong guesses -- I personally 
suspect Printing will be pretty important, as well as CalDAV Free/Busy. 
At the end of the day though, we want to see what feedback we get as 
people try out Preview, and be responsive to that. Our roadmap to 1.0 is 
going to look a bit fuzzy before we get that feedback. Be patient with us!

As Jeffrey hinted at, if someone is willing to step up and contribute 
code for a feature that fits our big-picture vision but that the OSAF 
team wouldn't otherwise have time to prioritize, we're very willing to 
hear them out and try and make it work. We are going to be pretty strict 
about the code fitting the architecture, and the design making sense for 
our users -- though we're willing to work with people to hit these goals.

As for the particular feature of adding different event statuses and 
scheduling behaviors, I'd say that we certainly have the infrastructure 
for adding different statuses. Building in different behaviors is 
technically doable, but as Jeffrey pointed out I suspect we're going to 
be fairly reluctant to build in formal, enforced scheduling behaviors.

> * Even small workgroups can find it very difficult to schedule 
> meetings.  I've had a hard time scheduling meetings with as few as 3 
> people (total), and I end up grilling each participant about the status 
> of each of their listed events for the next few days. "Which of the 
> meetings you have scheduled are ones that you could punt?" Unless by 
> "small" you mean that you assume that every member of the workgroup 
> knows the background of every internal and external event every member 
> schedules.  Which would be a very, very limiting assumption.

> I'm curious as to whether this sort of feature has come up for 
> discussion before.  If something like this could be bolted on later, 
> that would certainly satisfy my needs.  But I'm just surprised if 
> Chandler hasn't considered building in this capability, which to me 
> seems extraordinarily valuable, even for a fairly small team.

That is interesting feedback, will keep that in mind. I guess we'll 
count you as one vote for some more thoughtful scheduling design.

> I've been following Chandler since its existence first became public, 
> and I just finished reading Dreaming in Code, and so was reticent to 
> even mention any additional features.  But I couldn't stop myself. :-)

Glad to hear you've been following us, and glad to see you participate 
in the list. Have you tried out Chandler or Cosmo yet? Waiting for Preview?

Cheers,
Katie