[Design] Accepting Invitations

[Sheila Mooney]

Mimi,

So are you suggesting that people will create a "shell" event with no  
date/time information, stamp this as a communication to send to  
others, then eventually the date/time details get filled in later as  
negotiations go back and forth over time? I assume this is what you  
mean by adding gobbledy-gook to the date/time fields. My  
interpretation of  tentative events are events that are fixed but I  
don't know if I am going to attend. I don't think of these as events  
with no specific date/time. Do we think this is a common use case?

How are people going to discover this workflow in the first place?  
Isn't it more likely that negotiations would start via email going  
back and forth before it would ever occur to anyone to create and event?

I see your point about gobbledy-gook in the mail fields...like for a  
draft but I am not sure people will create these "shell" items and  
send them to others. Imagine, I get an email from a friend about a  
new restaurant in his neighborhood, I would likely just reply "hey we  
should setup a time to go" and iterate on that until I do pick a date/ 
time. I can't imagine replying with an event that has no date/time  
just because I am suggesting we have dinner. Perhaps I am not  
thinking about this workflow correctly.

Sheila

On Apr 28, 2006, at 2:28 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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