[Design] Accepting Invitations

[Mimi Yin]

The thread on Lozenge shape started wandering in the direction of  
Invitation workflow issues, in particular, how we decide when to "Add  
an Event Invitation to your Calendar" if we don't support an explicit  
"Accept/Tentative/Decline" workflow.

I think this brings us back to a discuss we had about Negotiation and  
Scheduling in December: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/ 
design/2005-December/003687.html

Generally speaking, if an event is really tentative, as in the  
Organizer really has no idea of when the right time would be, the  
Organizer should be able to initiate the Invitation workflow by  
sending an Event Invitation with no specific Date/Time information.  
Instead, negotiations about time are worked out in the Body field.

However, the item is still a Communications/Event item, therefore, it  
shows up in the Dashboard and the Calendar App area in the In/Out  
collections, but doesn't show up the Calendar.

Users should also be able to type gobbledy-gook into the date/time  
fields and have them stored and displayed in the Date column and  
Detail view as text strings. (e.g. ASAP or Soon! or Whenever).

This means that only as an Invitation solidifies over time, after  
negotiation and input from all participants, does someone (probably  
the Organizer) finally put in specific date/time, at which point, it  
appears on everyone's Calendars.

We've discussed this ability in the past. This is also related to the  
ability to store gobbledy-gook (non-email addresses) in the  
Addressing fields as text strings.

Is this something we should/could tackle as part of lightweight  
Scheduling and Invitations in 0.7?

Mimi