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2. Purpose of FreeTime and its place in the market
2.1. Typical meeting scheduling functionality in the market
There are plenty of the meeting-scheduling solutions on the market. The main idea of any of them is to provide users the means to organize events in timeframe appropriate for all attendees with regards to their personal free time. There are stand-alone meeting planning systems (e.g. Meeting Maker by Meeting Maker, Inc.) and scheduling modules within the framework of office packages like Microsoft Office Outlook by Microsoft. The basic functionality of all such solutions is almost the same: they allow a group of users to share their calendars and to find an appropriate timeframe for some future meeting or just to place a meeting at some fixed time and let attendees accept or decline this time for that meeting. The existing solutions suppose that each team member has his own schedule that is made up of busy (intervals occupied by previously scheduled events) or free intervals of time. The scheduling goal is then to find a timeframe which is free for scheduling of all necessary attendees or to just ignore the fact that some of the attendees are busy during the chosen time and will not be able to attend. Such scheduling is done by a person - a meeting organizer - who is responsible for checking personal agendas and for the decision to ignore conflicts if necessary. Different visual and analytical tools are provided to make locating a desirable time-slot easier, but scheduling itself remains a manual task for the meeting organizers. The organizer is also responsible for re-scheduling a meeting if one of the attendees who "must attend" finds the chosen time unavailable.
2.2. Advantages of FreeTime
The main idea of FreeTime is to make the meeting planning process more collaborative, more flexible and more convenient for all team/project members. Unlike most other systems, FreeTime allows its users to define a timeframe for meetings instead of a single fixed start time, end time and duration. Then the software automatically locates a time for all meetings in all personal schedules. The algorithms incorporated into the software can resolve scheduling conflicts of various kinds and even re-schedule some already defined meetings if it is needed. The software switches into a manual-scheduling mode only if it cannot automatically find a schedule without conflicts.
Automatic optimization of schedules and plans is still not common even for big and expensive industrial software solutions. There are even fewer affordable mobile solutions available for SME and small groups. Therefore, another goal of FreeTime development is to make highly automated scheduling immediately available to everyone to respond to everyday planning challenges in a timely manner wherever you are. For this reason, the powerful scheduling capabilities of FreeTime have been made available not only for PCs, but also for hand-held devices and mobile phones. Now you can organize meetings and group events while traveling, from you home or in any other situation just when you decided to do so. You will also be able to reply to invitations to some new event. By using FreeTime you can respond promptly and align your plans with this upcoming event or reject an inappropriate timeframe, leaving time for the system to reschedule.
Compared to existing systems, FreeTime supports all the basic terms and data representations that are common for such systems, adding more flexibility, collaboration and mobility.
2.3. How FreeTime works: a short sample scenario
The short scenario below gives an idea of the styles in which FreeTime can be used. In Section 9, a more complete scenario is given to explain in detail how FreeTime works.
Peter works in the marketing department. While on a business trip, he receives an attractive offer to collaborate with a well-known automaker. He is in the airport waiting for his flight home.
17:00 - Peter takes his PDA and, using FreeTime, plans to hold a 1-hour meeting with the business development director and chief engineer of his company as invited participants. He specifies that it is necessary to hold the meeting tomorrow before the end of the working day.
After specification of all required parameters, Peter synchronizes them with the FreeTime server located in the office of his company (to connect the server, Peter uses the WiFi-spot in the airport). The server automatically finds the most appropriate time and site for this meeting - from 14:00 to 15:00, since it is clear from the schedule for tomorrow that the chief engineer is busy in the morning up to 12:30 at meetings with the chiefs of the construction bureau and the production department, and he usually has lunch from 13:00 to 14:00.
17:10 - Andrew, the chief engineer of the company, is holding a meeting with the IT-manager and the engineer-designers. From time to time, he takes a look at his laptop connected to the local network. After Peter's query was processed by the server, Andrew receives an invitation to the meeting to be held tomorrow from 14:00 to 15:00 and immediately confirms it.
17:15 - Nick, the business development director, is going to the investment bank by taxi. With the help of the FreeTime client application on his mobile phone, he receives an invitation to an important meeting with Peter and Andrew tomorrow from 14:00 to 15:00. Nick has scheduled negotiations on a credit application in another bank for tomorrow and he realizes that, after his talks in the bank and business lunch, it is impossible to get to his office by 14:00, so he rejects the proposed time but says that he is quite free from 15:00 to the end of the working day.
The server immediately processes the message from Nick sent via GPRS. The program sees that there are several meetings with Peter and Andrew already scheduled for tomorrow from 15:00 to 19:00 but, shifting some of them, finds a free interval from 16:30 to 17:30.
17:20 - Andrew and Nick, with their laptop and mobile phone, synchronously receive a proposition to move tomorrow's meeting to 16:30 and confirms it. The FreeTime server sends this information to Peter who is now in the airplane. When he sees that, as a result of successful synchronization with his colleagues, the meeting is scheduled for 16:30, Peter opens the file folder and starts preparations for the meeting…
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