[chandler-users] Intelligent Event Scheduling

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Alan,

Here's a bit more design background which may clear up a few of your  
questions.

In our experience, the tricky part with small workgroups is that it's  
hard to get to enter this kind of data into any 'system'. Many people  
simply store these kinds of fine-grained distinctions in their head.

Many times, people don't really know if they 'need' to attend an  
event or not, because so many of these decisions are relative.  
Perhaps the event they have blocked off from 1-2PM today is not that  
important, but then again, perhaps it's more important than the event  
you're trying to book them for. They can't know until you make the  
proposal.

Instead, as Jeffrey said, our approach has been to provide users with  
some flexibility around scheduling so that it's easy for people to  
negotiate their way to a good meeting time.

Here are some ideas from a list discussion we had a little over a  
year ago: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/Journal/NegotiationAndScheduling

That being said, there are ways to use the attributes we have today  
to figure out how set in stone an event is...assuming you're sharing  
calendars...

+ Event status in Chandler is specific to the user, it can be shared  
or not shared. So when an event is Tentative or FYI, it's Tentative  
or FYI to the 'owner' of the calendar.
+ Addressing fields. To:, CC: and BCC: are good clues about whether  
someone is required to attend a meeting or not.

Finally, re: small workgroups. In Chandler vernacular, workgroup  
means an almost closed, discrete group of people working together.  
It's not to say that the workgroup never interacts with people  
outside of itself, but it would be safe to say that over 80% of  
people's daily interactions are within the workgroup. So I have no  
doubt that scheduling a meeting with just 1 other person can be  
extremely difficult, if if both people are CEO-types with tightly  
packed schedules. But the size of any individual meeting wouldn't  
qualify that group as a small workgroup.

So you can imagine that if there is a group of 10-15, even up to 30  
people who work closely together all the time, each person would get  
a pretty good sense of all the meetings that go on within the group  
and even many of the meetings that happen outside of the group (e.g.  
meetings with board members, client meetings, etc.).

I hope that clarifies more than confuses. You've definitely  
identified a problem that we want to solve and are working towards  
solving, even in Preview, but we're coming at it from a different  
tack. As Katie said however, we don't know what our plans are for 1.0  
as of yet and based on the dogfood feedback we get, we fully expect  
to continue iterating on our scheduling workflows.

Mimi

On Mar 21, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Alan Mandel wrote:

> * It's much easier to choose an "event bumpability" setting from a  
> drop-down list (which could be optional and/or tailored to the  
> needs of the organization) than to remember to add explanatory  
> comments or start a little conversation about every event  
> describing how other people should treat the event.
> * Even in small workgroups there are "private" meetings for which  
> details should not be shown.  I understand the tradeoff for Preview.
> * "Tentative" might be a useful category, but it's not quite what  
> I'm after.  It seems to imply that the event may not happen.   
> What's more useful is knowing that the person doesn't need to  
> attend the event.
> * 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.