🚀 go-pugleaf

How essential is it for people to be able to see
inside (or manipulate) others' calendars? I would
argue "not very".

In my (informal) observations of people scheduling
meetings the biggest problem seems to be obvious:
finding the set of times when all (or most)
members are free to participate. People typically
don't care WHY others are busy so much as THAT they
are busy. So I don't need access to the possibly
sensitive information inside your calendar to schedule
a meeting with you; I only need to know when you are
free.

Suppose I can overlay my calendar (with busy times 
blocked out in gray) over yours, which is marked in
the same way. I can easily identify when we are both
free (by looking for the "white space") without having 
to know all the details of your life. I believe some 
people at Apple presented this as a scenario at CHI 
in Austin a couple of years ago. This successfully 
skirts some of the privacy issues while providing most 
of what people want in ordinary situations. 

Another factor which seems very important, and
which those of us who spend much of our day at computers
tend to forget, is portability. One of the primary
times that people tend to schedule meetings is after
other meetings. So a solution which was portable would
have a significant advantage. We're seeing more of 
solutions of this type in the form of pocket computers.

At Sun we have a group calendar system called "Calendar
Manager" which my group has been using for the last few 
months. It allows you to control who may view your calendar,
who may add appointments, and who may delete appointments,
all along UNIX user/group/all permission lines. But my
experience has been that people tend not to modify 
(or even read) other's calendars. Even when
they do look at another person's calendar, it's mostly
to see when they might be free (more than what they
are doing). So a simple graphical depiction of "busy"
times would provide most of what people needed without
having to worry about the privacy issues.

If you have a secretary who manages your calendar, 
then more sophisticated/subtle permissions schemes such as 
those being discussed in comp.groupware would seem more
appropriate. But how common is that scenario? Does 
anyone have a feel for this?

Is this too simplistic a view? Do people have experience
with commercial group scheduling products which supports
or contradicts these suggestions? If so, I would appreciate
hearing about them.



--
Tim Shea    Sun Microsystems             (508) 671-0430
            Boston Development Center    shea@East.Sun.COM
            Two Federal Street
            Billerica, MA 01821