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List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: [Kde-pim] [RFC]: KDE GroupWare solution
From:       David Bishop <david () bishop ! dhs ! org>
Date:       2002-06-15 16:10:40
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On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 11:57:07AM +0200, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> 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.

Well, the other 795 people need to know that the room is no longer
available, for when they schedule *their* meetings.

> > 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.

That's my point, there isn't just a few people that would need it.  Any
of those 800 people are capable (and do) schedule meetings themselves.
We don't have personal secretaries, to do this for us, and the area
secretary would laugh in our face if we asked her to do it for us.

> >  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.

Hmmm, maybe..

> > 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.

But there is no person responsible for the room.  That's kinda what I've
been trying to say :-)  There is noone to email, thus multiple people
would have to have "write privs" to the rooms calendar, and by multiple
people, I mean every one of those 800.  And then we're back to the "oh,
and make sure one person doesn't overwrite some elses".  I'm really
sorry if I seem to be persnickety, as I really am not trying to be, I
just know how our current system works, and it works very well.  Going
back to the old "track down the secretary in the next building over to
see if we can have a meeting in this room in two weeks" just isn't going
to cut it, *for my company*.  That doesn't mean, of course, that it
wouldn't be workable for other companies.

> 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.

Well, not *strictly* necessary, but I can (pretty much) guaruntee that
without it, I wouldn't be able to switch even my group over to
korganizer.  However, and I think this point has been lost, I don't
expect korganizer to do anything about it.  Writing a groupware server
is out of the scope of KDE (repetition is the basis of learning!). So,
if korganizer could come up with a peer2peer version to do this,
without having a standalone server, that would work for small groups, or
even medium sized ones, then that is great!  Then, add support for the
groupware servers out there (phpfoo, etc), and you have the best of both
worlds.  The whole point to my mini-rant was that there is indeed uses
for servers, that cannot be (fully) addressed in a p2p manner. 

Have a great day!

D.A.Bishop

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