Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-27
2001-04-10
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C705S007380, C705S002000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06216110
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to computerized calendar programs. More particularly, the present invention relates to providing public access to availability information associated with an individual's computerized calendar via a distributed computer network.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In today's technological environment, people often keep calendars on their computers in order to maintain their schedules. In a cooperative electronic environment represented by a distributed computer network, where computers can communicate with each other, calendar programs allow users to electronically query each others' schedules. Accordingly, an individual user of a calendar program in a group of users can pick a time at which to plan a meeting which does not conflict with the schedules of proposed attendees. The individual user can direct a computer to query a computer file (or files) maintained by the calendar program. The computer file contains, among other things, availability information including the times of the day that each of the proposed attendees using the calendar program are either free or busy (the “free/busy information”). In this manner, the individual user is presented with the times of day that each of the proposed attendees can or cannot attend the meeting. This feature allows the individual user to pre-select an appropriate day and time to plan the meeting so that the largest number of proposed attendees can attend.
Several problems face existing calendar programs. One problem is the closed-environment nature of the existing calendar programs. A user of an existing calendar program only has access to the availability information of the other users of the existing calendar program. This limitation creates a problem if the user wishes to invite a non-user of the existing calendar program to attend the meeting. The user does not have access to the schedule of the non-user, even if the non-user maintains an electronic calendar, albeit on a different calendar program.
Most existing calendar programs maintain the availability information for each of the users in a single file having a proprietary format such that non-users cannot easily access it. The reason is three fold: (1) it makes locating and accessing the information easier for the calendar program, (2) individuals generally do not want to allow public access to their personal or business calendars, and (3) calendar programs typically have a proprietary data format and access infrastructure. For security reasons, it makes sense not to allow anyone outside of the users of the particular calendar program to have access to the schedules of the users. On the other hand, often is the case that a user will desire to plan a meeting and to invite a non-user.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system which allows both users and non-users of a calendar program to have access to the availability information associated with the schedules of each of the users, while not allowing non-users access to the actual calendars of the users.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention meets the above described needs by providing the availability information of a user of a calendar program to the public by creating an availability file containing the availability information for that user in a known format, and making the availability file accessible to the public. Non-users of the calendar program can access the availability file of the user, thereby allowing them access to the user's availability information to help maximize the number of proposed attendees that can attend a planned meeting.
One aspect of the present invention allows a user of a calendar program to keep a personal or business calendar on a computer. The calendar program can allow the user to maintain a schedule file containing all of the user's calendar information separate from other users of the calendar program. Alternatively, the schedule file can be a merged file common to all of the users of the calendar program and containing the calendars of all users. The calendar program also creates and maintains an availability file that contains only the availability information of a particular user. Each availability file is typically unique to a particular user. The availability file is created in a known format such that other calendar programs can open the file and understand the information it contains.
The availability file is made available to the public so that non-users of the calendar program can access the user's availability information. One method for making the availability file accessible to the public is by publishing the availability file to a publicly accessible location, such as a File Transfer Protocol (“FTP”) server on the Internet. The location to publish the availability file may be stored in a registry file available to the calendar program. In the exemplary embodiment, the calendar program makes use of known communication protocols, such as FTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”), to publish the availability file of the user to the publicly accessible location. In this manner, non-users of the calendar program can access the publicly-accessible availability information of the user, without gaining access to the user's complete personal or business calendars.
In another aspect, the present invention allows a user of a calendar program to plan a meeting by compiling a list of proposed attendees and querying publicly accessible availability files associated with each of the proposed attendees. Each of the availability files contains the availability information of its associated proposed attendee. The calendar program presents that availability information to the user in a fashion which allows the user to plan a time for a meeting that is more likely to maximize the number of proposed attendees that can attend.
More particularly, a calendar program can accept a first input representing a request to plan a meeting. Responsive to the first input, the user is presented with an input screen which accepts a second input representing an identifier associated with a proposed attendee. The identifier can be the name of the proposed attendee, an alias for the proposed attendee, an e-mail address for the proposed attendee, or some other mechanism to uniquely identify the proposed attendee. The calendar program queries a registry file to determine the location of an availability file associated with the proposed attendee.
The registry file indicates to the calendar program how the proposed attendee's availability file can be found. For instance, the registry file may indicate to the calendar program that an address for the availability file is contained in a “vCard” file associated with the proposed attendee. If so, then the calendar program will read the vCard file to ascertain the address. Alternatively, the registry file can define a standard scheme for identifying the address of the availability file. For instance, the registry file may indicate that the address takes the form “ftp://yourserver/freebusy/%alias%.vcs,” and the calendar program may insert the identifier in place of the “%alias%.” The address can be an Internet address, such as a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) associated with the proposed attendee, or any other identifier of a publicly accessible location of the availability file.
Once it has ascertained the address of the availability file, the calendar program accesses the availability file, via a pre-determined communication protocol, such as FTP or HTTP, and retrieves the availability information associated with the proposed attendee. The calendar program is able to access and retrieve the information from the availability file because the availability file is created and maintained in a known format in a publicly accessible location. In this manner, the availability file can be accessed by any calendar program that is configured to read the availability file, and which is capable of communicating by the pre-determined communication protocol.
Once it has retrieved t
Kilpatrick & Stockton LLP
Microsoft Corporation
Nguyen Cuong H.
Trammell James P.
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