Scheduling Assistant Features

Owned by Nicholas Blair
Last updated: Sept 21, 2011Version comment

Preface

This document is intended to describe the individual features available in the Scheduling Assistant. Most of these features are displayed in the Scheduling Assistant Screenshot Tour.

For Schedule Owners

Schedule Owners are individuals that are sharing their schedule with one or more individuals and/or populations.
With the Scheduling Assistant, Schedule Owners can:

  • Populate an Availability Schedule that designates which times during each day that they are willing to accept an appointment.
  • Set a number of preferences that are used to automatically populate many of the event's data fields, like meeting location and duration.
  • Restrict appointment creation to times with a Visible Window defined by a number of hours in advance and a number of weeks in the future.
  • Generate a regular Availability Schedule using the Block Builder which accepts a syntax like "9:00 AM to 11:00 AM MWF from 9/19/2011 to 12/31/2011," or generate ad-hoc availability with the AJAX based Dynamic Schedule builder.
  • Each block within an Availability Schedule can be reserved for one-on-one or group appointments. Each block additionally can use an alternate meeting location (e.g. Mondays in Meeting Room A, Tuesdays in Meeting Room B).
  • See a record of events created and manipulated through the Scheduling Assistant
  • Force email reminders to be sent to meeting attendees, regardless of their personal Calendar Server reminder settings
  • Publish a Public Profile that includes a publicly-visible and search engine index-able page that can be used to describe the Schedule Owner and allow any individual within the same Calendar system to view their schedule and create appointments. Public Profiles can also be tagged with keywords to allow Schedule Owners to group similar interests.

Once Schedule Owners have registered with the Scheduling Assistant, they don't often need to return. The Schedule Owner can set their schedule for the next few months or year and not need to return; the Scheduling Assistant will bring appointments to them.

For Schedule Visitors

Schedule Visitors are individuals seeking to create an appointment with a colleague, instructor, academic advisor, or other person in the same calendar system.
Schedule Visitors are typically individuals that don't use the existing scheduling features of the Calendar Server, and often don't use the Calendar Server at all.

With the Scheduling Assistant, Schedule Visitors can:

  • See a list of individuals with whom they can view schedules and create appointments. Each individual is displayed with a Relationship that describes why the Visitor might want to meet with that particular Owner.
  • Selecting a Schedule Owner's name presents a simplified Scheduling interface that displays only the parts of the Availability Schedule that are visible. Available appointments are color-coded*; red for unavailable, green for free, yellow for "personal conflict" and blue for already attending.
  • Creating an appointment is as simple as selecting a free block, entering a message, and clicking Submit. The Scheduling Assistant automatically creates the event in the accounts of both individuals in the Calendar system, populates the data fields according to the Owner's preferences, and updates the attending status.

* The color-coded display also has a "High Contrast" equivalent for those that have difficulty distinguishing color. Each block's markup is additionally compatible with screen readers for easy navigation.

For Service Administrators

  • Account lookup form will display all of the user attributes and Scheduling Assistant preferences for a given account.
  • Schedule Debug allows you to see what a Schedule Visitor will see when viewing any Schedule Owner's schedule along with each person's relevant iCalendar data.
  • See appointment statistics for all Schedule Owners
  • Manage Relationship Data Sources and Ehcache instances