ZeroPointFivePlanning notes

Free-busy Sharing

Requirements

1. Publish free-busy data from one collection, extracting event data from that collection and sharing it in a location separate from any shared calendars.
2. Access other users' free-busy data.

Assumptions

1. We will share free-busy data in 0.5 by leveraging the WebDAV account also used for sharing the whole calendar.
2. The WebDAV server doesn't have any special calendaring logic.
3. Free-busy information on the server will be publicly readable in 0.5.
4. Some users will want to publish only free-busy information, and not the rest of their calendar. Or if they want to do both, the permissions will be more restrictive for the latter.

Design issues/tasks

1. Consider whether there is a GUI for publishing free-busy information. The user might simply select a calendar and turn on "free-busy publishing". Partial answer: We're thinking that only one collection would have publishable free-busy, and the user would take action to publish that. Note that it's also possible to have free-busy information published automatically (or with a checkbox to disable) as soon as the WebDAV account information is configured.
2. Consider whether there is special GUI to access somebody's free-busy information. Is there somewhere to type in the URL?
3. Is there some connection between accessing somebody's calendar and accessing their free-busy published information? Can you find out about one from the other? See architecture task 1.
4. How does a user select another user to view their free-busy? Do we need to correlate email addresses and webDAV sharing accounts again? Partial Answer: when an item is stamped as an event, then you start to add people, a "schedule" button shows that. If the user clicks the "schedule" button, we start downloading free busy data.
5. How about coordinating free-busy viewing with sharing circle? We could make the sharing relationship setup automatically exchange free-busy publishing locations. Temporary answer: See tuesday's notes
6. How do multiple calendars relate to somebody's free-busy information -- do we do roll-up? Can I select a calendar and choose to make it part of my free-busy, or not? Answer: In 0.4, there will be some item collection (we will pick one) that is the source of free-busy information. Thus, if I download somebody else's calendar, unless I drag an event into my own collection, it doesn't roll up into my free-busy.

Architecture work

1. Consider whether free-busy information must be in a separate collection.
2. Consider what format to publish free-busy information in. Is it CalDAV-like?
3. Figure out how to correlate email addresses and WebDAV account locations. Do we annotate WebDAV account collections with a set of known email addresses and make that publicly readable? Or is this part of the information shared in sharing circle invitations?
4. Regardless of the limitations of 0.5 free-busy sharing, we need to plan for ultimately having the ability to roll up free busy from multiple collections, or to separately publish multiple sets of freebusy.

-- LisaDusseault - 09 Oct 2004