tek@ms.uky.edu (Thomas E. Kunselman) (09/16/90)
riesermc@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Michael Rieser) asks for some suggestions
for a scheduling program. I will try and list a few things that I think
might be useful if I had to use such a system with colleagues.
I'd want to be able to specify an access control list of people who had
priveleges to change and read my calendar. For instance, it would be
handy to allow both my boss and my secretary to block out time on the calendar
if I am out of the office or if they need to schedule a meeting.
The access control lists should also be able to signify at least two levels
of read access. One for everything, and at least one other for everything
but personal entries. Therefore, I would also need a way to specify when
an entry is personal and have someone without all read access to see that
the time has been blocked out, but not know why.
When automatic scheduling meetings, it would be nice to be able to specify
the email addresses or aliases of the people I want to meet with. Therefore,
the system should be able to be run across multiple workstations. When the
scheduling software has come up with a tentative time, ask me to OK it and
then have it tentatively mark people's calendars with the meeting time and
purpose and then autogenerate email to each individual notifying them of
the meeting and any text I care to include with the notification.
I want to be notified if someone has tentatively scheduled a meeting for me.
I also don't want that entry to look the same as a permanent entry made by
someone authorized for my calendar. I want to have to confirm an entry that
was scheduled tentatively, and when I confirm it with the calendar, an
automatic confirmation should be sent via email to the person scheduling
the meeting.
I guess it would be a nice option to be able to turn confirmation on and off
so that you can require everything your secretary schedules for you to be
confirmed. Just one way to keep things from sneaking up on you.
It would be nice to have the ability to call up colleagues calendars along
side your own to view them at once, especially when using the automatic
scheduler. Either a month or a specified day.
Additional calendar's for non-entities should be available and easily
created with final control going to the creater of the calendar. For example,
my secretary might be responsible for the scheduling of a conference room
on our floor. Other people should be able to review the conference room
schedule and tentatively schedule a block of open time for their meeting.
However, the person in charge of that calendar should also have to confirm it.
It might be nice to be able to attach personal notes to calendar entries.
When you are viewing your daily schedule, have places to click on if there
is additional information for an entry.
Be able to set an entry 'type' such as a deadline, meeting, vaction,
whatever. When viewing your monthly calendar, icons for each of these types
could be displayed in the appropriate squares for each day. Then click on
the day and it would display the entries.
An easy way to print off a day, week, or monthly listing. It would be
especially nice if different formats were available, such as a wallet format,
something for the desk, something to give to a colleague, etc.
Good Luck! A scheduling program would be very useful to have. I won't have
X until about a month from now, but I'm sure I'll be looking for useful
software to run. Will your classes projects be archived somewhere?
--
Thomas Kunselman {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!tek
Planning and Institutional Research bitnet: irkunsel@ecuvm1.bitnet
East Carolina University internet:tek@ms.uky.edu
Greenville, NC 27858 (Educate, Don't Legislate!)