Conference iosg::all-in-1_v30

2855.0. "TM Problems @Large Aero Customer" by SMOKN::MEAGHER (The New Contributor System) Mon Jun 14 1993 06:39

Greetings.  (Esp. to Andrew and Dave, I feel like I've tuned into a very
witty program here ...) 

I have recently returned from a customer site where
several TM problems have surfaced.  I have listed them below in the 
Customer's priority order.  The customer is on V2.4, some
customizations.  I can get more explicit info on version shredout 
and customization if necessary.  This customer wants to expand their TM 
population from several hundred to over 1,000 users, and currently is 
not at a comfort level with these perceived problems.

I have DIR/TIT=TM on both this conference and _V24 and have not 
found relevant references, except for _V24, Note 1291.* regarding TM 
Meeting shows up on wrong day .. I'll check for patches (Customer's 
Priority Item #9).   Another good hit in this conference Note 348.*, 
Meeting Conflicts Notice not Always Displayed.  I'll have the customer 
DO TMTMSPRE to init first (Customer's Priority Item #8).

That leaves us about 10 - 11 important issues to try and resolve.
These problems are "as reported" to me, I have not yet personally
witnessed the behavior below. 

Thanks in advance for your help and ideas.

/Kent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~``
AUTO-READ OR AUTO-SCHEDULE 
1. Meetings do not appear on a person's schedule unless she has
READ her meeting notice.  Others (especially schedulers) who scan her 
calendar will view her schedule as clear.  This causes considerable 
conflicts and confusion.

Schedulers need the option of having a meeting placed on a person's
schedule without that person having to read their meeting notice to
effect this placement.  With this change, a simple "courtesy notice"
could advice the person of the scheduling action. The person could then
go into their calendar and edit the meeting to say "NO" if desired. 
Multiple meetings scheduled for the same time would be reduced, scans
would be more accurate and informative, and conflicting meetings could
still be scheduled, identified by the system to the user as a conflict,
and finally arbitrated by the user. 

FULL SCREEN EDIT/CONFIRMATION ON SCHEDULING
2. The scheduler of a meeting does not enjoy a full screen edit and 
confirmation option.  Once past the subject and location fields, the 
scheduler cannot back up to those fields.  Schedulers are often 
interrupted and make mistakes during the process.  If attendees are
listed and the scheduler attempts to back out or abort the screen (GOLD
K, KEYPAD 0, CTRL Y, etc), those attendees may be accidentally notified
of a meeting.  The only way to avoid this problem is to be sure that 
each attendee is deleted before exiting the screen, thus avoiding an 
accidental broadcast of erroneous notifications.

Schedulers need full screen editing with a confirmation prompt such as
"Do you wish to send this meeting now?".  If the scheduler answers NO,
the meeting could go to the created folder and from there it could be
edited before sending or deleted. 

SAME TIME/DATE MEETINGS NOTIFICATIONS CONFUSION 
3. If a scheduler schedules more than one meeting for the same time/date
and then one of the meetings is later edited, the notice of the change
is sent to all attendees of all meetings scheduled for that time/date. 
Actual calendars are unaffected.  An attendee of meeting 'A' may
therefore receive a notice that his meeting has been rescheduled, when
actually it was meeting 'B' which happended to be at the same time/date.

The workaround is currently to schedule meetings at 10:00, 10:01, 10:02, 
etc.  Note: SET OWNER is not used for scheduling meetings.

MEETING REJECTION PRECLUDES RESCHEDULE NOTIFICATION
4. If an attendee answers NO to a meeting and NO to having it appear on 
her calendar, she will not be notified if the event is subsequently
rescheduled or changed.  The attendee's name still appears on the 
scheduler's attendee list, and Add Attendee will therefore not work.

If the attendee does allow the meeting to appear on her schedule, it 
causes confusion for the attendee as well as other schedulers.  If this 
behavior must remain, if the attendee answers NO, they should be removed 
from the scheduler's attendee list.

MODIFYING SCHEDULED RECURRING EVENTS IS TEDIOUS
5. Modifying scheduled recurring events (SRE) is a tedious process. If
the recurring event (e.g. a standing meeting that has been scheduled out
6 weeks) is modified, each attendee receives six (6) individual notices
to which they must reply, and each scheduler receives 6*n (where
n=number of attendees) in response. 

Grouping SRE meetings into a logical single entity could alleviate this
problem.  Multiple Delete of SRE meetings is supported. Having XAA
(multiple Add Attendees) and XE (multiple edit) functions would help. 

SUBJECT/COMMENTS NEEDED ON CANCELLED/DELETED MEETINGS
6. When a meeting is cancelled and deleted, the scheduler does not have 
an opportunity to explain to the attendees why this action has taken 
place.  In addition, the notification to the attendees does not tell them 
the subject of the meeting.  This makes it difficult for the users to 
understand the cancellation.  Comments are allowed on almost all 
scheduling functions, and should be added to the delete function as 
well.  Adding the subject to the cancellation notice automatically would 
enable the users to more easily relate to the event.

DISPLAYING/PRINTING LOCATION W/EVENTS-AT-A-GLANCE
7. The meeting LOCATION does not appear on any of the print options.  
Since the most popular print option is Events-at-a Glance (PEG), it 
would be most helpful if the location field both printed and displayed 
with this Events-at-a-Glance option.

MEETING/APPOINTMENT CONFLICTS NOT FLAGGED
8. Scheduling or receiving notice of a meeting that conflicts with 
another meeting produces a conflict notice to the user as expected.  
However, a conflicting meeting and appointment (e.g., an event without 
attendees) scheduled at the same time does not produce such a conflict
notice to the user.  This does not alert the user to conflicts between
meetings and apppointment events. 

SCHEDULE RECURRING EVENT ERRORS
9. When using Schedule Recurring Events, style 4: (On <weekday> of 
every <ordinal> week), the event does not always correctly schedule to 
the specified <weekday>.  For instance, SRE for Tuesdays may end up on 
Weds, Thurs, etc.

CAN'T INDEX BY SUBJECT OR WEEKDAY
10. The ability to index meetings by SUBJECT is highly desireable, as 
well as indexing on WEEKDAY.  This would enable schedulers and users 
alike to more easily find recurring meetings, or meetings related by 
subject matter.

AUTOMATIC OLD MEETING PURGE/LIMIT TO DELETE LIST
11. Deleting old meetings is not always practiced, and users should be 
able to enable an automatic purge feature of some sort.  The actual 
deleting of old meetings is also rumored to be confined to only 10
meetings at a time to avoid system errors. 

(Note: There is an SPR filed on the ATTENDEE.DAT file growth problem.
On the advice of CSC, the customer is manually deleting corrupted 
records from this file the weekend of June 12th.  The limit on how
many old meeting records can be successfully deleted will be assessed 
after this cleanup.  Digital Engineering is reportedly working on an 
ALL-IN-1 housekeeping procedure that will automatically maintain the 
ATTENDEE.DAT file).

NO INTERRUPT AT MEETING CONFIRMATION SCREEN
12. When a user reads a meeting notice, he often hits return quickly and 
is then prompted for his YES/NO response.  He cannot, at this point, 
perform a GOLD I(nterrupt) to check his schedule.  It is as though he is 
already in an "interrupt function".  Based on the users' propensity to 
quickly hit return before checking for possible conflicts, it would be a 
reasonable expectation that he can interrupt at this point and return to 
the confirmation screen.

INDEX MEETING NOTIFICATIONS
13. Users would like to index incoming meeting notifications, instead of
having to respond to meeting requests sequentially. 

APPOINTMENTS DO NOT REQUIRE RESPONSE
14. When using the Print Events at a Glance (PEG), appointments seem to 
inherit a YES/NO response based on the meeting event just prior to the 
appointment.  Appointments do not require a response.  (This is 
cosmetic, mostly).

    Kent,
    
    if you're in the U.S call Dave - he's much more helpful than me and i'm
    not even sure how many days i'm here between now and September so I
    might never catch up....
    
    regards,
    
    Andrew.D.Wicks

        Hi Kent,
        
        I've got a good idea who the customer is.  I'll respond to the
        detailed list later.  My initial pass through, indicates a major
        opportunity for the local office to make megabucks.
        
        Dave Zaniewski

AUTO-READ OR AUTO-SCHEDULE 
1. Option RFA (Reply for Attendee)

FULL SCREEN EDIT/CONFIRMATION ON SCHEDULING
2. You can accomplish this with customization.
There are SPR's requesting this.

SAME TIME/DATE MEETINGS NOTIFICATIONS CONFUSION 
3. This is a user error.

MEETING REJECTION PRECLUDES RESCHEDULE NOTIFICATION
4. New problem with v3.0.  SPR submitted.

MODIFYING SCHEDULED RECURRING EVENTS IS TEDIOUS
5. This can be accomplished with customization and the appropriate CSP/ICF.

SUBJECT/COMMENTS NEEDED ON CANCELLED/DELETED MEETINGS
6. This should be customizable with v3.0, I haven't looked at it.

DISPLAYING/PRINTING LOCATION W/EVENTS-AT-A-GLANCE
7. Simple customization is some cases.

MEETING/APPOINTMENT CONFLICTS NOT FLAGGED
8. It does on my system.

SCHEDULE RECURRING EVENT ERRORS
9. This has to do with the include weekends flag.  SPR submitted.

CAN'T INDEX BY SUBJECT OR WEEKDAY
10. Simple customization.

AUTOMATIC OLD MEETING PURGE/LIMIT TO DELETE LIST
11. Major customization needed here.  SPR's submitted.
The NOTE is incorrect in one respect, there is no housekeeping being developed.
I've done the background work needed to develop simple housekeeping, but lack
funding.

NO INTERRUPT AT MEETING CONFIRMATION SCREEN
12. Thank goodness they can't GOLD I at this point!!!  This is a restriction.

INDEX MEETING NOTIFICATIONS
13. This can be customized.  It will lead to data corruptions when event
notices are responded to out of sequence.  Not recommended.

APPOINTMENTS DO NOT REQUIRE RESPONSE
14. This can be corrected with customization.

    re: .2
    ... I'm all for megabuck opportunities!  As we thoughtfully consider
    those Software Problem Reports (only where Problem actually = Digital's
    problem) and engender goodwill with the customer, we may then
    effectively position ourselves with value-added consulting.  Your
    assistance in identifying and helping to rectify these SPRs so
    categorized will help immensely.
    
    re: .3
    .. Thank you for the timely once-over of the list.  I will strategize
    with our ALL-IN-1 specialist and Account Manager to draft an action
    plan and would appreciate a sanity check -- perhaps off-line.
    
    Regards /Kent

    Several of the earlier problems listed in the base note have been
    tested under V3.0 and are working fine.  The customer now simply needs
    to upgrade to 3.0. However ...
    
Our customer has listed the following problem with TM as their #1 
priority issue for schedulers who wish to place meeting events on
several people's calendars.  Listed is the problem, the suggested
solution (RFA), and the question/idea of using ALL-IN-1 Personal
Assistant (PA). 

I don't know of another conference covering PA, so I'm posting here.  
Our IM&T organization is not using PA yet, but I'm hoping that there is 
some PA experience out there that could be shared regarding this 
most important customer situation.

Thanks in advance /Kent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTO-READ OR AUTO-SCHEDULE 
1. Meetings do not appear on a person's schedule unless she has
READ her meeting notice.  Others (especially schedulers) who scan her 
calendar will view her schedule as clear.  This causes considerable 
conflicts and confusion.

Schedulers need the option of having a meeting placed on a person's
schedule without that person having to read their meeting notice to
effect this placement.  With this change, a simple "courtesy notice"
could advise the person of the scheduling action. The person could then
go into their calendar and edit the meeting to say "NO" if desired. 
Multiple meetings scheduled for the same time would be reduced, scans
would be more accurate and informative, and conflicting meetings could
still be scheduled, identified by the system to the user as a conflict,
and finally arbitrated by the user. 
********************************************
This is a request for enhancement.

OPTION 1
--------
The suggested solution to this was to use the RFA (Reply for Attendee)
option.  This option is described in the following section of the 
User Reference Guide (extracted from Bookreader):

  17.2.11  Entering a Reply for an Attendee (RFA)
  The Reply for attendee (RFA) option updates your calendar
  to include a reply that an attendee gave you in person instead
  of using ALL-IN-1.

  This option displays the details of the current event. You can-
  not enter replies from attendees who you did not invite using
  ALL-IN-1.

  To enter a reply for an attendee:

   1. Enter RFA.
   2. Enter the attendee's name.
   3. Enter the attendee's reply.

While this action would put the event on the scheduler's calendar, it 
would not place the event on the ATTENDEE's calendar to support the 
scanning of free/committed time.

OPTION 2
---------
What is the feasability of using the ALL-IN-1 Personal
Assistant that acts in behalf of the attendee to automatically: 

a) Check for original incoming meeting requests.  (Schedulers would
need to determine if changes/edits/cancellation notifications would also
be automatically answered and placed on an attendee's calendar). 

b) Answer requests in the affirmative (by default), thus putting them 
on the attendee's calendar

c) Send a message (to oneself) that the meeting was scheduled 
(courtesy memo).

d) The attendee could subsequently edit the meeting and decline if 
desired.
    

    kent,
    
    IOSG::APA_SUPPORT
    
    press KP7 etc
    
    Regards,
    
    Andrew.D.Wicks

    Re .-1
    
    Although Andy is corect about the location of the APA conference, since
    it hasn't had a new note in about three months, and the APA project
    Manager left the company last week, you'd probably find as much APA
    experience in this conference... Both the APA QA engineers (I'm one of
    them!) and one of the developers follow this conference for a start.
    
    Feel free to try it if you want though!
    
    Re .-2
    
    To make a first stab at answering your APA question, I'm not sure!
    
    You'd have to see if you could get the meeting code executed when you
    got APA to read the message. Maybe you could do it by dispatching the
    attached function and providing a SCRIPT script to answer the questions.
    The rest of the stuff with sending messages etc., would be easy.
    
    I suggest you pull the APA kit and docs. from the network location in
    the APA conference and try it out.
    
    You should also probably understand that the TM functionality is
    unlikely to be substantially further enhanced.
    
    Graham

    
    I have a feeling that APA skips any TM messages.
    
    So be careful.
    
    Mike

    Mike is correct, APA skips TM messages (in fact any messages that have
    attached functions.)

    Paul.

Re: the last 3 replies ....

Thanks to you all.  Saved me from hauling the swe over the net and installing
it on a test system ... etc.  Our office expert is on leave, so I can be 
considered dangerous ... heh-heh.

Well, it was worth a try.  Darn.

I guess these attendees will just have to read their mail or get somebody to 
read it for them.  If APA skips TM stuff, we're pretty much out of luck on 
the 'bootstrapped' approach.  Have to do something clever from scratch.

Thanks again ...

/Kent