Goals and Objectives

• Improve perceived performance and user experience by allowing users to continue using the app while synching.
• Sharing format design
• Persist user's sharing setup on Cosmo
• Make some incremental enhancements to sharing experience

Summary of Changes

• User Problems Addressed by Changes:
  • When I sync the app I can't do anything else until it's finished.
  • When I sync a shared calendar it's hard to see the changes that have been made by others.
  • When I install a new version of Chandler, I need to restore and resubscribe to shares individually.
  • It's not clear what some of the menu items do ie: toggle online/offline.

• What New in Alpha3:
  • Background sync
    • Run sync in the background while continuing to use the app.
    • Ability to specify a time interval for background sync or force the sync to initiate manually.
    • Temporarily disable stamping of shared items until the merge code is complete in Alpha4.

• What's New in Alpha4:
  • Continue progress on background sync with the activity viewer for logging changes.
  • Persisting a user's sharing world across instances of Chandler
    • Improve upgrade and re-install experience by helping users restore their shares, both published shares and subscriptions.
    • Allow users to view all shared calendars in Scooby, both published shares and subscriptions.
    • Add a new menu item - Restore shares..., which in turn pops up a dialog where users can:
      • Select from a list of shares to restore (both published and subscriptions); or
      • Restore all shares
      • Which shares an user selects to restore will persist across instances of Chandler

• What's Changing in Alpha4:
  • We are changing the name of some menu items based on suggestions for the dogfood feedback.
  • Take offline / Go online is now Suspend / Resume sharing

Risks and Dependencies

• Alpha3:
  • Background synching is difficult - need extensive testing to make sure it works well.
  • Cannot stamp shared items - merge doesn't work correctly. Technically this is something people can do today that will be disabled.

• Alpha4:
  • Logging and notifications still needs design work and hasn't been fully spec'd out.
  • Sharing format design not yet detailed in the spec. We really don't know the scope of this work.
  • Depending on the technical details we may need to wait until format design is done to work on persisting a user's sharing world.
  • Menu item work is trivial. Not all of it is required for Alpha4 but it's probably easier to do in one step.

* Alpha4_Restore_shares.png:

Collection menu

• Sync
• Sync all >> All, Mail, Shares
• Auto-sync...

• Subscribe...
• Share / Stop sharing
• Suspend / Resume sharing
• Manage share...
• Publish free-busy
• Copy URLs to clipboard
• Restore shares

• Rename
• Color

• Add to / Keep out of Dashboard

-- SheilaMooney - 21 Jun 2006