2.1.2 Calendaring and Scheduling (calsch)

Last Modified: 2003-05-21

Chair(s):
Bob Mahoney <bobmah@mit.edu>
Pat Egen <pregen@egenconsulting.com>
Applications Area Director(s):
Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>
Ted Hardie <hardie@qualcomm.com>
Applications Area Advisor:
Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>
Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: ietf-calendar@imc.org
To Subscribe: ietf-calendar-request@imc.org
In Body: SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
Archive: http://www.imc.org/ietf-calendar/mail-archive/
Description of Working Group:
Calendaring and group scheduling products are well established for
organizational use, but they usually are limited to exchange of
information among users of the same system, usually within the
boundaries of a single organization. This working group will pursue
development of standards to enable different products to interoperate
and to work across organizational boundaries. This work will
include the development of MIME content types to represent common
objects needed for calendaring and group scheduling
transactions and access protocols between systems and between clients
and servers. The working group will also consider and
recommend solutions to the security issues concerning the exchange of
calendar information between network entities.

The group will exist to create standards that make calendaring and
scheduling software significantly more useful and to enable a new
class of solutions to be built that are only viable if open standards
exist. The Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group is
chartered to focus on Internet standards for three basic problems
facing group scheduling and calendaring users today. These include the
following:

1. A standard content type for capturing calendar event and to-do
  information. The content type should be suitable as a MIME message 
  entity that can be transferred over MIME based email systems or HTTP
  World Wide Web. The basic objects along with their representation
  using MIME will be specified in the document entitled "Core Object
  Specification".

2. A standard peer-to-peer protocol for common calendaring and group
  scheduling transactions. For example, these may include
  exchanging over the Internet, event-requests, reply to
  vent-requests, cancellation notices for event-requests, requesting
  free/busy time and replying to free/busy time requests between
  different calendaring products. The working group will undertake
  this work in two phases, with the first phase focusing on meeting
  requests and the second phase on free-busy time. To the extent that
  the peer-to-peer protocol has requirements related to security, the
  working group will attempt to apply existing Internet standards for
  authentication, and to assure privacy and integrity of sensitive
  calendaring information. The protocol for the interoperable 
  transactions will be specified in a document called "Calendar
  Interoperability Protocol" in the milestone list.

3. A standard access protocol to allow for the management of calendars,
  events and to-dos over the Internet. This protocol will be
  specified in the document called "Calendar Access Protocol" in the
  milestone list.

This working group effort should be developed and stabilized with a 6-9
months since there has been considerable prior work done in this area.
This prior body of work includes:

* Distributed Scheduling Protocol (CHRONOS) IETF Working Group

* ISO/IEC SC18 Distributed Office Application for Calendaring,
  Scheduling and Appointments

* MHS Alliance Calendaring and Scheduling Interoperability Protocol
  (CSIP)

* X.400 API Association (XAPIA) Calendaring and Scheduling API (CSA)
  and Calendaring and Scheduling Interoperabilty Specification (CSIS)

* X/Open Consortium Calendaring and Scheduling (XCS) Implementor's
  Specification

* Versit vCalendar format

The working group will focus on harmonizing, evolving and developing
protocols and algorithms based on this work. The process is
subject to extension if many new features are added, or more revision
is needed.
Goals and Milestones:
Done  Submit core object specification as Internet-Draft.
Done  Submit first Internet-Draft of Calendar Interoperability Protocol.
Done  Submit second draft of core object specification as Internet-Draft.
Done  Submit revised Internet-Draft of Calendar Interoperability Protocol.
Done  Submit core object specification to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
Done  Submit Calendar Interoperability Protocol to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Draft.
Done  Submit Internet-Draft (informational) on Guide to Implementors using Calendaring Protocols
Feb 01  Hold second CalConnect Interoperability Testing on iCalendar, iMIP and iTIP
Mar 01  Submit Internet-Draft on Calendar Access Protocol to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
Jul 01  Request last call on Guide to Internet Calendaring
Jul 01  Submit Internet-Draft on Guide to Internet Calendaring for consideration as a Proposed Standard
Jul 01  Submit revisions for Internet-Draft for iCalendar, iMIP and iTIP
Jul 01  Submit revisions for Internet-Draft for Calendar Access Protocol
Jan 02  Evaluate readiness for interoperability testing of Calendar Access Protocol
Internet-Drafts:
  • - draft-ietf-calsch-cap-11.txt
  • Request For Comments:
    Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) (RFC 2445) (291838 bytes)
    iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) Scheduling Events, BusyTime, To-dos and Journal Entries (RFC 2446) (225964 bytes)
    iCalendar Message-based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP) (RFC 2447) (33480 bytes)
    Calendar attributes for vCard and LDAP (RFC 2739) (25892 bytes)
    Guide to Internet Calendaring (RFC 3283) (31768 bytes)

    Current Meeting Report

    Adjourn.Minutes reported by Bob Mahoney.  There were no slides.
    
    
    --
    There were no additions to the agenda.
    
    
    We have an obvious lack of clarity regarding some of the 2445 
    recurrence grammar.  The original text is being interpreted in 
    conflicting ways, and the chairs have asked the authors of the original 
    document to clarify the intended approach.  The authors have in most cases 
    moved on to other efforts, and we appreciate their time and look forward to 
    some clarification.  The chairs will be resolving these issues SHORTLY 
    following this input, and any resulting discussions on the list.  
    
    
    We need to get a basic document out, so that we can have firm footing from 
    which we can consider useful extensions and other next steps.  Some 
    attendees indicated that they have a list of suggested editorial 
    corrections in process, which will be sent to the list when complete.
    
    
    To help get a basic document out soon, an effort will be made to 
    identify any current functionality which can be usefully handled as 
    extensions.
    
    
    We've begun to see new implementation efforts based on the existing 
    drafts, although this has pointed out some ambiguity from the earlier 
    work.  
    
    
    Our Milestones are well out of date.  The chairs will have them updated 
    soon.   (August 1 target)
    
    
    Attendance was light, leading to a discussion of the need for physical 
    meetings, given the challenges seen by many WG participants in 
    attending.   The chairs will consider this issue in the future, and 
    attempt to reserve physical meetings for the most useful 
    opportunitie

    Slides

    None received.