Method to facilitate a reply to electronic meeting invitation in an interactive multi-terminal system employing electronic calendars

Abstract: An electronic calendaring method for use in a data processing system which includes a plurality of interactive terminals which are interconnected to permit an end user at each terminal to interchange information with each other and to maintain an electronic calendar. The method facilitates the reply process to an electronic invitation to attend a meeting that is issued by one of the end users by arranging for the system to advise the invitee that a meeting notice is available for review in the "In Box" of the terminal. The method causes a composite screen to be built which simultaneously displays the meeting details and the relevant section, i.e. a day of entries, of the owner's calendar in a side by side format so that calendar entries are correlated to the meeting date and time. The composite display permits an interactive selection by the calendar owner end user of at least one option which can be either to accept the invitation and calendar the meeting or to reject the invitation. In either event a reply is automatically sent to the end user that issued the invitation and the invitee is returned to the task that was being processed when the initial message was received.

Description: This invention relates in general to electronic calendaring methods and in particular to an improved method to provide a calendar's owner reply to an electronic mail invitation to attend an event that is being calendared by another calendar owner. Background Art The prior art has disclosed a number and variety of interactive electronic calendaring systems and method. The objective of all of these systems is primarily to assist the person who, for a number of different reasons, maintains a calendar of future events containing various information about the event at entry points on the calendar which relate to the time of the event. It is known from IBM TDB v. 26, n°11, p. 6221, Apr. 84, to prompt a user for acceptance of a meeting notice and, in case the user accepts, to update the electronic calendar with the invitation details. The increase of personal computers and intelligent workstations in recent years has made it possible for calendar owners to establish and maintain their calendars on these interactive type data processing systems. Two general types of interactive electronic calendaring systems have thus evolved in the art. In one type of calendaring system, the owner of the calendar is generally also the user of the workstation and that workstation is generally not a part of a larger network. Generally, in these types of systems, the calendar functions involve presenting a screen to the user representing a day calendar divided into a number of time periods or time slots. Each period is capable of displaying a limited amount of text that the user enters. In some systems, the day calendar can scroll vertically to present more time periods to the user or horizontally to present longer text entries. The operator can generally "page" forward or backward and, in most arrangements, can display a requested date. These calendaring arrangements generally do not limit the type of event that is calendared nor the terminology employed at any of the entry points and, to that extent, function in the same manner as conventional manual calendars or appointment books. The electronic calendaring method and systems do have an advantage over the prior art manual calendaring of events in that the user generally has the ability to scan a time span involving a large number of days and identify calendared events quite rapidly. The other type of calendaring arrangement that has developed in the prior art involves multi-user environments having a large number of terminals or workstations which are generally part of a larger communication network that has been established to permit the users to interact with each other and with data maintained on the data processing system. In this environment, a user at a terminal or workstation can send a message to one or more of the other users on the network and is notified when the addressees has received and read the message. In most of these environments, each user generally maintains a calendar, and in many of these environments the reason for the interaction with each other quite often generally involves reference to respective calendars. A considerable amount of time is therefore spent in many organizations, with people checking and rearranging their calendars to accommodate various events such as meetings, presentations, etc. In this environment, the calendar systems and method have progressed to the point where a person who is calling a meeting can at least review within the constraints that the security system dictates, the calendars of other users on the system that he intends to invite to a meeting, to determine whether a given time period is available on the respective calendars of the perspective attendees. However, once the meeting time is set and the prospective participants notified of the date, time, and subject of the meeting, each participant must update his own electronic calendar and reply to the meeting request. While the system can facilitate the request and reply message process, it is sometimes less frustrating when a negative reply has to be transmitted to merely use the telephone to arrive at another mutually convenient time. As a result, a considerable amount of time and effort is spent by calendar owners replying to requests for participation in events that are being calendared by other persons. The cross referenced applications describe various improvements to electronic calendaring methods for increasing productivity and making the overall system more appealing to the calendar owner by providing functions that the calendar owner came to expect and rely on when his calendar was being kept manually. A problem that persists in multi-user systems is exemplified by the following typical scenario which can occur many times during a normal working day to a calendar owner working on a terminal. Assume that the end user calendar owner is working on a particular project at his terminal when he is notified by a message on his screen that he has just received an electronic invitation to an event being calendared by another user on the system that is to occur three weeks in the future. Assume further that the system can distinguish a meeting notice from other type of documents that are sent by the electronic mail function of the system, so that the message supplied to the calendar owner does indicate that it is a meeting notice but no other details are provided. This is typical of most systems currently in commercial use. In order to reply to the meeting notice the owner must interrupt the current project and have the message displayed in order to seen the meeting details, such as the person calling the meeting, the location, the subject, the date and time period. In some systems this might just require operating a predesignated key such as a function key on the keyboard or a "hot" key that has previously been established to display the meeting details in a window on the screen or on a new screen. In a less advanced system, the end user might be required to exit the current program that he was working under when the message notice was received in order to enter another program to view the details of the meeting invitation. After viewing the message, the owner then wants to view his calendar, particularly the period surrounding the date and time of the new meeting. The process of bringing up his calendar application generally involves a number of interactive steps which involve selecting options on menus and responding to prompts with data entered through the keyboard. Assuming there are no conflicts indicated when the appropriate day calendar screen is presented, and the owner was not interrupted during the process of getting the day screen displayed without forgetting all of the meeting details, the invitee can update the calendar to reflect his intention to attend the meeting, exit the calendar program to the meeting notice, and send a reply which acknowledges acceptance of the invitation, and then bring up the interrupted application that he was working on at the time he received the notice. The degree of frustration involved in responding to a meeting notice can in many situations result in the invitation being ignored or the reply being delayed which THEN causes calendar owners to use a manual back up system like the telephone to arrange and schedule meetings. The ultimate result is a loss of confidence in the calendaring system. The present invention is directed to a method to avoid the above cumbersome process of responding to a meeting notice. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The method of the present invention provides a calendar owner with a simple and effective method for responding to an electronic meeting notice by presenting to the calendar owner on one screen in a aside by side relationship, the details of the meeting notice and the relevant portion of of the owner's calendar, in response to pressing a predesignated key, such as a "hot" key, or a function key. The method automatically builds the side by side display screen from the key data contained in the meeting notice. The date and time information from the meeting notice are employed by the system to retrieve the particular section of the invitee's calendar which is stored by the system. The day calendar is positioned on the screen with the start and end times of the requested meeting bracketing the horizontal central section of the computer. The meeting period may be highlighted on the invitee's screen in order to assist the calendar owner to recognize potential conflicts. The method permits the invitee to accept or reject the invitation by selecting one of the two options that are displayed on a command bar. The selection of the option accept, automatically updates the invitee's calendar so he is assured that the action has taken place, send the reply back to the meeting originator, and return the invitee to the point in the original application program that he was at when he responded to the message on the screen. The method of the present invention provides little or no opportunity for error and substantially no areas to cause frustration with the calendaring process. The method comprises the steps claimed in claim 1. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved electronic calendaring process. Another object of the present invention is to provide an improved method for replying to electronic meeting notices. A further object of the present invention is to facilitate the process of calendaring a meeting event by a calendar owner when responding to an electronic meeting invitation. Objects and advantages other than those mentioned above will be apparent from the following description when read in connection with the drawing. Brief Description Of the Drawing Fig. 1 is a block diagram of an interactive data processing terminal in which the electronic calendaring method of the present invention may be advantageously employed. Fig. 2 is a block diagram of a network of terminals of the type shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 3 illustrates a display screen presented to an end user in response to a request to see a list of mail documents in the box. Fig. 4 illustrates a side by side display of the meeting notice and owner's calendar presented to the owner in response to selecting a meeting on the screen of Fig. 3 Fig. 5 is a screen similar to the screen of Fig. 4 after the event has been calendared. Figs. 6A and 6B are a flowchart, illustrating various detailed steps involved in the improved electronic calendaring method. Description of the Preferred Embodiment: Fig. 1 illustrates the functional components of an interactive type data processing terminal on which the electronic calendaring method of the present invention may be advantageously employed. The terminal comprises a processing unit 11 which includes a microprocessor block 12, a semiconductor memory 13, and a control block 14 which functions to control input/output operations in addition to the interaction between the micro processor block 12 and the memory unit 13. The terminal further includes a group of conventional peripheral units including a display device 16, a keyboard 17, a printer 18, a disk storage unit 19, and a modem 20. Since the details of the above-described functional blocks form no part of the present invention and can be found in the prior art, only a brief functional description of each block is set forth, along with a description of their interactions, sufficient to provide a person of ordinary skill in the art with a basis of understanding applicants' improved electronic calendaring method. Processing unit 11 corresponds to the "system unit" of a personal computer system such as the IBM XT or IBM AT type systems. Unit 11 is provided with an operating system program which may be one of the many versions of DOS (Disk Operating System) which is normally employed to run the systems. The operating system program is stored in memory 13 along with one or more application programs that the user has selected to run. Depending on the capacity of memory 13 and the size of the application programs, portions of these programs, as needed, may be transferred to memory 13 from the disk storage unit 19 which may include, for example, a 30 megabyte hard disk drive and a diskette drive. The basic function of the disk storage unit is to store programs and data that are employed by the system and which may readily be transferred to the memory unit 13 when needed. The function of the diskette drive is to provide a removable storage function for entering programs and data into the system, and a vehicle for storing data in a form that is readily transportable for use on other terminals or systems. Display device 16 and keyboard 17 together provide for the interactive nature of the terminal, in that in normal operation, the interpretation that the system gives to a specific keystroke by the operator depends, in substantially all situations, on what is being displayed to the operator at that point in time. In some situations, the operator, by entering commands into the system, causes the system to perform a certain function. In other situations, the system requests the entry of certain data, generally by displaying a prompt type of menu/message screen. The depth of the interaction between the operator and the system varies by the type of operating system and the application program, but is a necessary characteristic of terminals on which the method of the present invention may be employed. The terminal shown in Fig. 1 further includes a printer 18, which functions to provide hard copy output of data developed or stored in the terminal. Lastly, the modem 20 functions to transfer data from the terminal of Fig. 1 to a host system through one or more communication links which may be a commercial type link or a dedicated communication link. Fig. 2 illustrates a network 21 of interactive type workstations of the type shown in Fig. 1. As illustrated, the network includes a plurality of terminals which are interconnected with each other and to a host central processing unit 23, which in turn is connected via communication link 24 to a second host processing unit 25, which also connects to another network 26 of interactive workstations. Functionally, the system operates to allow one terminal to communicate to one or more other terminals using established communication protocols, so that the various serially connected communication links are transparent to the operator. Such systems are well known in the art, and are currently in extensive commercial use. Since these communication links per se are not part of the present invention, only those details that are necessary for an understanding of the calendaring method of the present invention will be described. It should therefore be assumed in the following description, that each workstation on the network has a system node address and a "post office" address, and that to simplify the description, there is only one individual assigned to each node on the network. It should further be assumed that conventional communication services are provided by the system, such as directory listings of individual calendar owners and shareable resources such as meeting rooms, etc., which require scheduling. The system shown in Fig. 2 processes information as various types of data objects such as text data objects, graphic data objects, and calendar data objects. Each of these data objects are represented by a datastream which comprises a series of structured fields. The cross-referrenced applications may be referred to for the details of the various calendar objects and the various data structures that are employed by the system in implementing the overall electronic calendaring process and the general interterminal communication process which is often referred to as the electronic mail function. The end user of the terminal may at any time request to see the list of electronic documents that are currently in the "In Box" of the node or the terminal. Fig. 3 is an example of the type of list that would be presented. As shown the list comprises four columns. The first column identifies the sender. The second column identifies the document label or a short description of the document. The third column defines the document type while the last column lists the date of the document. The last line on the screen lists the functions of the function keys as a reminder to the terminal user. The second row of the screen lists the various options that are available to the end user when the screen is displayed. For example a selected document may be viewed by typing V, the first letter of the View command, the document having previously been selected by movement of a horizontal highlighting bar up and down on the screen to the line listing the desired document. Positioning the highlighting bar on the line containing the meeting notice and entering the letter V, produces the screen shown in Fig. 4. As shown in Fig. 4, the meeting details are displayed on the left vertical half of the screen, while the section of the calendar relevant to the period of the meeting is displayed on the right vertical half of the screen. The meeting date, start time and end time are displayed as well as the location, the invitee's, subject and the meeting caller or inviter. The section of I.M Auser's calendar, namely the section for the date 12/10/87, is displayed in the normal format of the day calendar. As shown in Fig. 4 the format has a time slot for each 30 minute period extending from 8:00a to 5:00p. If the 30 minute period is open a series of dots appears after the time. If the period is not available, the name of the event or the reason appears in place of the dots. The period of the meeting, i.e. 1:00p to 2:30p is available and may be highlighted to assist in recognizing potential conflicts. If the invitee decides to attend the meeting, he advises the system to ADD the event to the calendar by selecting the Add option at the top of the screen. Various methods well known in the art may be employed such as a mouse positional pointing cursor or a highlighted command cursor to select the Add command. Fig. 5 shows the result of selecting the Add command. The meeting has been entered into the calendar. In addition the system automatically sends a reply to the meeting caller J. Allen to advise him that I.M. Auser plans to attend the meeting. The system also returns the user back to the original screen which in the example being described is the mail list shown in Fig. 3. If the calendar owner had been working on a particular project using an application program and was advised by a message on the screen that a meeting invitation had just been put in the "In Box", the system would have returned to that application program so the calendar owner could proceed from the point that he left the application program to reply to the meeting invitation. Figs. 6A and 6B are a flow chart illustrating the various detailed steps involved in the method of the present invention. The steps are at a level of detail to permit a person of ordinary skill in the art to practice the invention without undue experimentation and hence no further description is deemed necessary.

Claims: A method for an information handling system maintaining electronic calendars for a first and second users and comprising a plurality of interactive interconnected user terminals to facilitate calendar entry and reply process by said first user to an invitation to a meeting having schedule times electronically sent over said system by said second user, said method comprising the step of: issuing said invitation to said first user, and being characterized in that it further comprises the steps of: displaying to said first user a window simultaneously illustrating details of said invitation, such as which is said second user, what is the subject of said meeting, or its location, and a section of said first user's calendar corresponding to said schedule times, said section being automatically selected by said system based on correlation with said schedule times, and in response to a request by said first user to said system to view said invitation, while said window is being displayed, prompting said first user to select one of a plurality of commands including an 'accept', a 'reject' and a 'save' command, and if said 'accept' command is selected, automatically updating said first user's calendar with said invitation details updating as "accepted" a variable containing the calendar request status, providing to said second user a reply to said invitation, and closing said window, or if said 'reject' command is selected updating as "rejected" said variable containing the calendar request status, providing to said second user a reply to said invitation, and closing said window, or if said 'save' command is selected updating as "pending" said variable containing the calendar request status, and closing said window. The method of claim 1, characterized in that an application program is being run on said first user's terminal at the time said invitation is received, including the further step of returning to said application program after said window is closed.

Inventors: MC GAUGHEY III HARRY STEPHEN, MELKUS LOVIE ANN, TORRES ROBERT JOSEPH, MC GAUGHEY III; HARRY STEPHEN, MELKUS, LOVIE ANN, TORRES, ROBERT JOSEPH
Applicants: IBM, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Application year: 1988
Main classification: G06F17
IPC codes: G06Q10