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List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: [Kde-pim] [RFC]: KDE GroupWare solution
From:       Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-06-15 9:57:07
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On Saturday 15 June 2002 05:26, David Bishop wrote:
>
> I don't think the "room scheduling" part is coming across, so I'll
> give it a go, as well :-)  At my job, we have about 6 rooms for
> meetings, that roughly 800 people share (many, many different
> groups).  When we want to schedule our monday morning meeting at 9am,
> in room 202b, whatever tool we use to do that should be able to tell
> us that it is either free or busy (Hey! Free/Busy :-) ).  Then, if it
> is free, then we have to switch the status to busy.  Emailng 800
> people isn't an option, so as far as I can tell, there is no way to
> do this without having a centralized server.

You don't have to email all 800 people. The information that there is a 
meeting is only interesting to the few poor people having to 
participate and when you schedule a new meeting.

> The requirements are 1)
> a way of anyone being able to tell the status of the room

That would be solved by putting the free/busy information on a server. 
You wouldn't actively push this information to all users, but would 
make it available for the few who need it when scheduling meetings.

>  and 2)
> security, such that I can't just "override" someone else's
> reservation. 

If you use standard servers like ftp or http you can use the existing 
access control mechanisms. For the application in a company security 
often is also not a very big issue, because usually you only have this 
kind of information available in the intranet where you don't need very 
strict access controls.

> A "read-only" web interface, seperated between users
> (i.e., *someone* has to be able to write to the
> database/flatfile/whatever, or there wouldn't be much info ;-)
> doesn't solve that problem, again, afaict.  Maybe I'm missing
> something, as it's late on a Friday night, and I want to go up and
> cuddle with my wife, so I'm not paying much attention to what I'm
> typing...

With the current KOrganizer version you could solve the room scheduling 
problem as follows: You create an email account representing the room 
and use this email address just like an attendee. A person responsible 
for the room (and maybe also for making coffee at the right time) gets 
the emails and maintains a normal calendar for the room (by using the 
groupscheduling features of KOrganizer). This calendar can be put on 
the web, so that all people can see when the room is occupied.

It would be even better, if there would be a way to handle free/busy 
information on a server, so that it would be more comfortable to find a 
free slot for a meeting, but that isn't necessary to accomplish the 
task.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@kde.org>
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