Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-30
2002-05-21
Bayerl, Raymond J. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C705S002000, C709S205000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06392669
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This present invention relates to a scheme of managing a schedule and, more particularly, to a system and method of managing a schedule which allows a group schedule designating an arbitrary member to be effectively registered and managed.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is common practice that a plurality of people work on a same subject at a same time, such as on a conference, a customer call, an external education course, a business trip, a specific work task, network, and the like. There are many schedules which are not owned by a specific person and which do not have a common relationship other than “working together”. In addition, these schedules may be subject to change or cancellation immediately prior to the scheduled event.
However, there is no schedule management apparatus which allows a schedule to be simply input for any plurality of users, and that can simply, through reference to the plurality of users, correctly and simultaneously adjust the multiple schedules. Many schedule management apparatus have to individually record and manage the individual schedules which is time consuming and labor intensive.
In the area relating to these problems, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application (PUPA) 8-22495, PUPA 6-96084 and PUPA 5-61876 exist. PUPA 8-22495 discloses a schedule management scheme which assigns a common ID number to related schedules to allow the related schedules to be managed as a group by retrieving the ID number.
However, it is necessary in this scheme to check all schedules for the same “related schedule ID” when searching schedules which are related to a particular schedule. Consequently, high speed processing is not possible when data is placed in a plurality of locations (servers) or in an environment with a slow data transfer speed such as a wide area network (WAN).
PUPA 8-22495 does not disclose a means for deleting a “related schedule ID” once it is written. Therefore, it is unable to flexibly cope with a user's request. In addition, because the display status cannot be changed unless all other user schedules are searched for every “related schedule ID”, the number of items to be searched may be abnormally large especially when user's schedules extend over a plurality of days. This results in a deterioration of performance when changing the display status.
While PUPA 6-96084 also discloses a schedule management scheme for a plurality of users similar to PUPA 8-22495, it produces a common schedule for a plurality of users in a unit which corresponds to a virtual user such as an “organization” and a “role” rather than a schedule of individual users.
However, with this approach, a member belonging to an “organization” or a “role” cannot display their individual schedule unless they obtain a schedule which is related to themselves from the common schedule, such as an “organization” or a “role”, and merges them together.
Further, assuming for example, that an event occurs in which a plurality of users having a certain role are supposed to visit a customer but one of them has to be immediately substituted by another user, this scheme can not flexibly cope with such an event because a group of user members such as an organization or a role has to be set-up beforehand in order to prepare a group schedule.
In addition, a problem results when an organizational change or a role change occurs, as this approach is not usable as a schedule LOG because only the schedule of an organization unit or a role unit was erased from the prior schedule hysteresis of the replaced user.
PUPA 6-12378 discloses a technology which allows a schedule for a plurality of persons to be displayed in calendar form at one time and allows the same schedule to be input for a plurality of persons globally. With this technology, a job name, a job code and a name code, etc., are prepared beforehand as a code master. In producing a schedule, an individual schedule is produced if the job name is not input, and, if the job name is input, the schedule is then managed as a job unit.
In this approach, a member cannot display their own schedule unless they obtain a common schedule based on their own “job code” from the “job master” beside their schedule and merges them together similar to PUPA 6-96084. In addition, a group schedule can not be prepared unless a job master is prepared beforehand.
In preparing a job master, a user of a same job is always assigned a same schedule unless the job master is modified in detail. Further, once a job master has been prepared and put in use, it is virtually impossible to modify the job master because all other schedules which are registered in a same job name are affected.
Further, this scheme cannot cope with the scenario where an alternate member is substituted on short notice to visit a customer in an organization change or a role change.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of the foregoing and other problems, disadvantages, and drawbacks of the conventional schedule management systems, the present invention has been devised.
It is an object of the invention to provide a method of managing a schedule which allows a group schedule designating an arbitrary member to be effectively registered and managed.
It is another object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which can flexibly cope with a change or a cancellation of a schedule of an entire group or a part thereof.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which can flexibly cope with a change or an addition/deletion of a group member resulting from an organizational change.
It is another object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which can simply change from a group schedule to a normal schedule and vice versa.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which can concurrently hold a group schedule and a normal schedule and be able to distinguish them.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which can quickly update or add/delete a group member.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which synthesizes the information communicated as much as possible, reducing the system load.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a schedule management system which reduces resources required for execution.
By specifying a plurality of arbitrary users and registering a schedule, the schedule is registered for the plurality of users specified. A sum schedule number which the system automatically assigns is then generated and registered in the individual schedules of the plurality of users. The content of the schedule which is assigned a sum schedule number is reflected on the schedule of other users without the users changing the content of their schedule on the scheduler. In addition, by copying a sum schedule number to other users, they can be added as member users. By deleting the sum schedule number, the schedule can be changed to a normal schedule.
This invention also provides a method of displaying a schedule for a plurality of users on a schedule management apparatus which is provided with a display screen and an input device and manages personal schedule information registered for each of the plurality of users. The method includes detecting an operation specifying a plurality of users and indicating a schedule sum, obtaining user identification information which uniquely identifies each of the specified plurality of users, and displaying a sum schedule input area on the display screen to input a common schedule to the specified plurality of users in response to the operation.
The method further includes detecting that schedule information including a schedule starting time and a schedule ending time has been input into the sum schedule input area, generating a sum schedule number corresponding to the schedule information inputted to the sum schedule input area, registering the user identification information of the specified p
Hirota Michikazu
Matoba Nobumitsu
Nagashima Kenichi
Bautista K. L.
Bayerl Raymond J.
McGinn & Gibb PLLC
Percello Louis J.
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