From slandrum@turing.csc.smith.edu Sun Nov 26 21:38:13 2000 Received: from laphroaig ([127.0.0.1] helo=localhost ident=skud) by laphroaig with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 13zz9S-0002NZ-00 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 21:35:18 +1100 Delivered-To: skud@s.pop.ihug.com.au Received: from pop.ihug.com.au by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.3.4) for skud@localhost (single-drop); Sun, 26 Nov 2000 21:35:18 +1100 (EST) Received: (qmail 29746 invoked from network); 25 Nov 2000 16:02:26 -0000 Received: from mx2-darkside.ihug.com.au (HELO mx2.ihug.com.au) (203.109.140.30) by tubby.ihug.com.au with SMTP; 25 Nov 2000 16:02:26 -0000 Received: from hiro.netizen.com.au [203.30.75.3] (postfix) by mx2.ihug.com.au with esmtp (Exim 2.05 #1 (Debian)) id 13zhmU-0001Bk-00; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 03:02:26 +1100 Received: from grendel.csc.smith.edu (grendel.csc.smith.edu [131.229.222.23]) by hiro.netizen.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id B18C4215EC for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 03:02:19 +1100 (EST) Received: from localhost (slandrum@localhost) by grendel.csc.smith.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA26001; Sat, 25 Nov 2000 10:55:34 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: grendel.csc.smith.edu: slandrum owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 10:55:34 -0500 (EST) From: srl X-Sender: slandrum@grendel.csc.smith.edu To: Reefknot developers -- Kirrily Skud Robert , Simon Cozens , srl Subject: Reefknot: user suggestions Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO Content-Length: 8525 Lines: 285 Here's what I've come up with so far from the Slashdot feedback about business-user features. I've got this prepared in a seaparate document, ready to be added to CVS, but I don't have CVS write access, it seems. Hmm. srl ================================================================== User Suggestions for Reefknot Features ====================================== This is a working compilation of end-user suggestions for the Reefknot shared calendar server, http://sourceforge.net/projects/reefknot/ . Reefknot is currently being designed, and this document is how we're tracking what users want. There is a separate document for technical suggestions. Taken from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00%2F11%2F24%2F2255239&cid=&pid=0&startat=&threshold=1&mode=flat&commentsort=3&op=Change . Major credits, by slashdot username: crucini, aetius2, pstorry, iabervon, Xenna, and others too numerous to mention. ====================================================================== Interface, general: ------------------- - People want a consistent, complete UI for users and administrators. - It's been pointed out that MS's Active Directory is hard to beat for ease of administration, but that's more of an LDAP issue I think. - People want a good UI tested on real users, because if the secretary can't use it no one will. Web interface ------------- - People love them or hate them. People who want one want it to be fast and clean, not bloated with Javascript. SSL seems important to people. X11 interface ------------- - Everything people said they wanted here looks like Evolution to me (srl). Windows interface ----------------- - People seem to think this is important for the corporate world to accept Reefknot, since most business users are and will be using Windows. - People want Outlook integration--- to be able to use Outlook with Reefknot, but they also seem to think that MS will twist their protocols so as to make this fail. WAP/Cellphone/pager/laptop interface ------------------------------------- - Some people seem to think wireless support would be useful. This may be a high-end feature. On the other hand, people want to be able to get messages on their pagers, which would be useful to many more users. - In particular, people want to see good laptop support, so that people with high latency can have appointments marked as "tentative" until they sync with the server. - (People haven't really suggested this, but if you're doing something low-bandwidth, the ability to send Jabber messages to ICQ or AIM would be cool.) - European cellphones reputedly can read vCalendar messages, according to Slashdot user Xenna. Unix text-mode interface ------------------------ - No one mentioned this. Email interface - invitations ----------------------------- - People want this. - On the other hand, if someone doesn't want to attend a meeting in an Exchange office, they just don't open the mail invitation. It's been suggested that passing iCal through email is not the Right Way. Email interface - other ----------------------- - People want the system to be able to send them PGP-encrypted mail. SQL backend ----------- - No comments so far. non-SQL backend --------------- - No comments so far. LDAP integration ---------------- - People do seem to expect this. Public/private appointments --------------------------- - People *really* don't want the world to see their schedule. - This has been phrased as "item-level security." People want access control lists (ACLs) for their schedules. - People want to be able to "pencil in" things--- not mark themselves as busy, but still have things planned. Proxies (eg secretaries) ------------------------ - There's been a suggestion that managers sometimes need to schedule their employees--- for example, vacation time or sick time. Groups ------------------------ - People want to be able to toggle between a personal calendar and a group calendar. Subgroups/nested groups/etc --------------------------- - People seem to expect this. Roles (manager, etc) ------------------------ - People want to be able to say, "show me which people with $role are free to work on this project." Non-human resources (meeting rooms, overhead projectors, etc) ------------------------------------------------------------- - People like this, and agree that these things should have administrators who can accept or decline for the resource. Invitation accept/decline ------------------------- - People expect this. Conflict identification ----------------------- - People expect this. Conflict resolution ------------------- - People like this idea. Attach files to meetings etc ---------------------------- - People want to attach documents to meetings (the agenda, the minutes, the handouts...) before and after the event. Project management ------------------ - People even like the idea of a simple TODO list. Understands projects -------------------- - No specific comments. Allows nested/sub-projects -------------------------- - No specific comments. Can attach meetings etc to projects ----------------------------------- - People like this. They also seem to want critical-path and dependency tracking for meetings. ("If this meeting gets pushed back, we'll want to reschedule all meetings that depend on it," or something like that. Or, on a micro-scale, "my dentist's appointment ran 30 minutes late, so I'll be late all morning.") Allows non-meeting tasks ------------------------ - No specific comments. Tracks time spent on non-meeting tasks -------------------------------------- - People seem to think that timesheet-generation would be really good, particularly if it let you keep notes about what you did. Someone said that exporting to a weblog would be cool. - Consultants want the ability to export their logs so they can bill their time. (IDEA: These features, plus expense-tracking, would make a great special-purpose client.) Gantt charts ------------ - People like this. At least one user really wanted to see more than Gantt charts--- like a super-chart that lets people see what all their peers are working on at any given time. PERT charts ----------- - No specific comments. Import/export facilities: ======================== - People mentioned Yahoo! Calendar as something to import/export with. PalmPilot --------- - This seems important to people. Wireless support is a wishlist feature. Netscape -------- - No comments. Exchange -------- - People want to be able to export/migrate existing Exchange systems. Flat text --------- - People really want this. Free (beer) Free (speech) ------------- Duh. :) Other features that don't fit into the list above: ================================================== - Drilldown from a yearly view to a single meeting, and many levels in between. - Multiple user levels (novice, intermediate, advanced). Evolution does this nicely. - Holiday database, with support for different countries' holidays and for user-defined holidays. Think of a multinational with offices in Japan, USA, and Europe, and with floating holidays (the CEO's birthday, or the company picnic). This may well involve the lunar calendar as well as the solar calendar. - Good searching facilities, Boolean and regex. - Have the option to start the week on whatever day of the week you want. - Daylight savings time. - Good contact-tracking, scalable to hundreds of thousands of contacts. At least one person commented on Exchange's tendency to not deal well with his/her company's 150,000-person contact list. (This is probably an LDAP issue.) - Ability to track when you talked/emailed/met someone last. This is a feature mostly from the salesforce-automation world. Might be relevant though. - Ability to differentiate between types of meetings: - appointment (just me) - meeting (ask other people to be there) - event (all-day, like a holiday or sickday) - reminder (appointment with no time, just a reminder) - Meetings should be repeatable at any interval, and flexible in understanding repetition. (Someone pointed out a nurses' schedule, with 3 12-hour days, 3 days off, 3 12-hour nights, 3 days off... as a pattern that no scheduling program understands. ================================================================== srl -- Shane R. Landrum slandrum@cs.smith.edu we generate our own light to compensate for the lack of light from above -AD