The purpose of the Meeting Scheduler System is to support the organization of meetings--that is, to determine, for each meeting request, a meeting date, location and equipment so that the expected participants can attend, the meeting date and location are most convenient to important participants, etc. The Meeting Scheduler System should also minimize the overhead usually incurred in organizing meetings.
When there is no common date within all preference sets or no common date outside all exclusion sets, the Meeting Scheduler System will not be able to find a date which is perfectly suitable to everybody. It is then necessary to negotiate a solution to resolve conflicts. This may be done in several ways (see preliminary description above).
Clients and analysts came to the conclusion that knowledge about participant status and about priorities among users and meetings should help in resolving conflicts by determining a "best" way to resolve a conflict. Even when there is no conflict, the participant status may be useful in determining a "best" meeting date and location.
Status and priorities
The following notions should be incorporated in the proposed extension. They capture the hierarchical importance of participants, the importance for a participant to attend a particular meeting relatively to other participants or to other meetings, and the ease with which a participant can make a particular date interval free. These various notions will be used in the conflict resolution process.
Participant Status
The participant status captures the hierarchical importance of a participant with respect to others independently of any specific meetings he is expected to participate in.
The participant status might be used, e.g., to determine a "best" compromise on date and location whenever several ones are possible.
The participant status is typically determined by some super user.
For instance, in the context of scheduling Faculty meetings the Departement Head would have a higher status than normal professors. The latter would have a higher status than student representatives.
Participant Importance
The participant importance captures the importance for a specific person to attend a particular meeting relatively to other participants.
Participant importances are typicaly determined by the meeting initiator.
For instance, the meeting chairman and secretary must be present; they have the highest participant importance. In a project meeting where specific tasks are discussed, the task leaders would have a higher participant importance than normal project members and a lower importance than the meeting chair, the task speakers or the project reviewers.
Meeting Significance
The meeting significance represents the importance for a specific person to attend a particular meeting relatively to other meetings or meeting requests.
Meeting significances are typically determined by the participants concerned.
For instance, participants to a specific task in a research project would assign a greater significance to a project meeting where their task will be discussed.
This information must be kept confidential.
Participant Flexibility
The participant flexibility is intended to indicate how easily a user can make a particular date interval free to allow meetings to be scheduled within that interval. Dates in exclusion sets and/or preference sets can thus be weighted accordingly.
The participant flexibility is typically determined by the participants concerned.
For instance, professors cannot move lecture periods easily; their participant flexibility for the corresponding date intervals should be low. A date interval which is not in the exclusion set of a participant should have a high flexibility for that participant.
This information must be kept confidential.
Using Knowledge about Status and Priorities
The following tactics illustrate some typical uses of the various kinds of priorities suggested above.
Updated Halloween 95 by
Mary Shaw
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