RETSINA SEMANTIC WEB CALENDAR AGENT

R   E   T   S   I   N   A      A   I         T   e   c   h   n   o   l   o   g   y
 

Integrates RETSINA AI Technology with Microsoft Outlook 2000
Navigates the Semantic Web


Intelligent Software Agents Laboratory
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie-Mellon University

Introduction

Retsina Semantic Web Calendar Parser

The Retsina Semantic Web Calendar Agent provides interoperability between RDF based calendar descriptions on the web, and Personal Information Manager (PIM) Systems such as Microsoft's Outlook. Schedules and events can be described on the web in RDF, using existing ontologies such as the Hybrid iCal-like RDF Schema or the Dublin Core ontology, and linked to individual's contact information described, for example, at their home page. The Retsina Semantic Web Calendar Agent, consists of a Distributed Meeting Scheduling Engine and the RETSINA Semantic Web Calendar Parser. The agent assists in organising and scheduling meetings between several individuals, and coordinates these based on existing schedules maintained by MS Outlook.


Features

Distributed Agent-Mediated Meeting Scehduling using the Retsina Calendar Agent The Agent allows users to:

The Calendar Schedule markup connects existing concepts (such as attendee details) defined across the Semantic Web, so that tools such as the Retsina Calendar Agent can autonomously navigate the Semantic Web to colate and fuse the relevant distributed information into a single, coherent knowledge source, and present this knowlegde in a useful manner.

A PowerPoint presentation is available that describes the Retsina Semantic Web Calendar Parser and outlines some of our project goals.


Schedules

Semantic Web Schedules have many uses - for example, marking up Conference Schedules at a Web Site (eg the Semantic Web Working Symposium), or publishing Seminar Series or Class Schedules. Several Conference Schedules have been (or are being) developed to date:
http://www.daml.ri.cmu.eduprojects/RDFCalendar/2001-ThreeRiversFestival.rdf
FOIS01 Conference http://www.daml.ri.cmu.eduprojects/RDFCalendar/FOIS01-Schedule.rdf
Trading Agent Competition Workshop http://www.daml.ri.cmu.eduprojects/RDFCalendar/TAC01-Schedule.rdf
WI 01 Conference (in progress) http://www.daml.ri.cmu.eduprojects/RDFCalendar/WI01-Schedule.rdf
SWWS Workshop Day 1 http://ilrt.org/discovery/2001/06/content/swws2001-07-30.rdf
SWWS Workshop Day 2 http://ilrt.org/discovery/2001/06/content/swws2001-07-31.rdf
SWWS Workshop Day 3 http://ilrt.org/discovery/2001/06/content/swws2001-08-01.rdf

Other calendar schedule examples are also available. For more information about the RDF Calendar task force, visit http://ilrt.org/discovery/2001/04/calendar/.


Invoking the Retsina Calendar Agent from the Web

This section demonstrates how the agent can be invoked remotely (Under Construction...)

Browse the Trading Agent Competition Workshop

Enter your Agent Name:

Import the Trading Agent Competition Workshop into Outlook

Enter your Agent Name:

Note, for both operations (above) you should be registered with the ANS, and enable the import and browse settings under the Options - General tab. See the help pages for details

Importing Schedules into Outlook

Retsina Calendar Agent The Retsina Calendar Agent provides support for distributed meeting scheduling, by autonomously requesting and comparing available meeting slots from each attendee's calendar agent, and determining the optimal meeting slot for all attendees. Each agent has access to it's user's schedule defined within Outlook 2000, and on request, confirms which of the proposed meeting slots the user could attend. These replies are then sent to the proposer agent, which then determines the best meeting slot, and replies with the final meeting schedule, which is inserted into each user's Outlook schedule and marked as tentative.

The Retsina Calendar Agent allows users to:

The Retsina Semantic Web Calendar Parser works synergistically with the Retsina Calendar Agent, by providing the agent with schedules posted on the Semantic Web and idetifying the contact details of the attendees at the posted meetings.

Registering the Agent with a Retsina Agent Name Server (ANS)

We are hosting a Retsina Agent Name Server on host www.daml.ri.cmu.edu at port 6677. This ANS provides a white-pages registry for agent name lookup. There are plans to extend calendar agent discovery in later versions using capability description languages such as LARKS and DAML-S.


Using the Electronic Secretary

My E-Secretary The Electronic Secretary is a web based interface to a distributed Meeting Scheduling Agent, that negotiates meeting requests with an RCal agent. By clicking on the E-Secretary icon opposite, you can schedule meetings with 'DAMLUser', a fictitious user currently running the RCal Agent at CMU.

Contact

For questions and comments, please write to nospam-retsina@cs.cmu.edu [remove 'nospam'].

Publications

See Also

Download the Agent

These tools were developed as research prototypes and hence are available "as-is" with no warranty of any kind, express or implied

The RETSINA Calendar Agent runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP and requires MS outlook 2000 or Outlook XP.

Download the executable for Windows Platforms


Questions? Comments? Problems? Please address them to nospam-retsina@cs.cmu.edu [remove 'nospam']