Calendaring and Scheduling API
The Interface To Enterprise Time Management

November 15, 1994

By XAPIA - X.400 Application Program Interface Association
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Introduction

Competition in most industry segments is as fierce today as it ever has
been. An organization's survival in this market environment often depends
on the strategic application of information technology such as personal
computers, networking, and desktop applications. These technologies have
been a demonstrated factor in increasing the productivity of the
individual worker. The new challenge for information technology products
involves leveraging the efficiencies of the personal productivity
applications within the workgroup environment. This next wave of
collaborative products will augment the productivity of not just the
individual worker, but also the workers within small teams, departments,
and across the enterprise. These applications are often referred to as
groupware applications. Groupware applications include categories for
electronic mail (store and forward of messages over a network), directory
services (database for access and security information related to
individuals, groups, and resources), workflow management (automation of
business processes), document management (integrated access to documents),
and calendaring and scheduling (automation of familiar time management and
activity scheduling).

One of the key features of groupware applications is the interfaces that
they provide to other applications. These interfaces permit other software
products to make use of the specialized service being offered by the
groupware application. For example, a project management product that is
able to use the calendaring and scheduling service to assign tasks based
on the availability of individual employees, a forms management product
integrated with a workflow management service, or an EDI services product
accessing an electronic mail service to provide an inter-enterprise
connection. The integration among these groupware applications is achieved
by standardizing the capabilities of an individual groupware service
through the use of an application program interfaces (API). The
standardization of these interfaces is the leading the way to greater
productivity gains from groupware products by allowing the services of one
groupware application to work with other applications.

The X.400 API Association (XAPIA) has recently completed the definition of
such an API that allows calendaring and scheduling capabilities to be
integrated into other desktop applications such as project management,
workflow, and electronic forms. The Calendaring and Scheduling API (CSA)
is the first step in the organization's efforts to provide technology that
will enable dissimilar group calendaring applications to share schedule
information. An interoperability specification will also be delivered in
early 1995.

Calendaring and Scheduling API

Calendaring and scheduling groupware applications deal with the automation
of familiar time management and activity scheduling functions. The XAPIA
Calendaring and Scheduling API (CSA) provides an interface to these
capabilities for non-calendaring applications. Applications can make use
of the CSA to schedule a meeting or event between people, RSVP a request
for a meeting, assign To-Do items, stick a memo on a calendar entry, or
search for free-time between one or more calendars, and other activities
related to administering calendars.

Calendaring and scheduling vendors provide a wide range of products that
address the time management needs of the individual user, the department,
and the enterprise as a whole. Personal Information Managers (PIM) provide
calendaring and scheduling for the individual. Group Scheduling products
provide calendaring and scheduling for the small team or department.
Enterprise calendaring and scheduling products provide similar services
for the enterprise. The CSA includes support for the complete range of
these types of products.

The CSA is designed in a vendor-independent manner. The CSA can be
supported by calendaring and scheduling products regardless of their
architecture; whether they are store-and-forward or message based,
client/server based, or remote-procedure-call (RPC) based. In addition,
the interface is platform- and operating system-independent. The CSA is
expected to be implemented on Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2, or UNIX
operating systems.

The CSA allows programmers to integrate calendaring and scheduling
capabilities into their applications without requiring a great deal of
special expertise. An application written to the CSA can make use of the
calendaring and scheduling capabilities, independent of the underlying
vendor product. Developers of calendar-enabled applications can expect the
CSA and the forthcoming interoperability specification to accelerate
market growth for their products. Organizations who use products that
incorporate the CSA capabilities can expect the rapid availability of a
new class of desktop and enterprise application that makes use of
information stored in calendars and schedules. This time and activity
based information is the essence of the data that is used to manage
corporations. Project managers, workflow managers, and cost bill-back
programs begin to reflect the dynamics of the enterprise when they are
linked to changing individual and business schedules.

Darby Johnson, senior analyst at International Data Corporation said, "The
calendaring and scheduling function is a significant element of the
collaborative process. The availability of an API for this function will
enhance a workgroup's efforts as it increases the level of
interoperability available among different calendaring applications."

Conceptual Model

The CSA is based on the familiar model of the datebook. Central to this
model is the calendar, which belongs to an individual person, a group such
as a department or project, or a resource such as a conference room or
piece of equipment. The calendar contains information that defines the
ownership and characteristics of the calendar, as well as, entries
associated with a day of the year. The calendar entries might take the
form of events such as a meeting, holiday, travel activity, or special
occasion. The entry might also take the form of an item on a task or To-Do
list. Additionally, the entry might be a memo or notation of a
conversation or important thought. The details about an event, To-Do, or
memo are captured in the entry attributes. These might indicate the start-
and end-date or attendees for an event, the priority or due-date for a
To-Do; just as you would mark up a page of a datebook.

The datebook model for the CSA is complemented by a set of functions for
accessing and manipulating the calendar, entries, and associated
attributes. The form of these functions shows its XAPIA heritage in that
it is styled after the mail-enabled, Common Messaging Call (CMC) API
published before it. The components of the CSA include functions for
Administration, Calendar Management, and Entry Management. The
administration functions provide the capability for finding a calendar
associated with a person and the secure access to the underlying
calendaring and scheduling product. Functions are also provided to inquire
the capabilities of a specific product. Other administrative functions are
provided to permit the backup and restore of calendar information.

The calendar management functions provide for adding and deleting calendars
from the product. Functions are also included to modify the
characteristics of a calendar such as its owner, normal work schedule, or
time zone. A function "callback" capability is also provided by the
administration function to trigger application-definable actions to be
executed when specific activities have occurred within a calendar. For
example, an application can write to a console log when even anyone
attempts to logon to a calendar or requests that an entry in the calendar
be deleted or modified. This capability is necessary in order to the
develop calendar-enabled applications that interact with established
network management standards such as Simple Network Management Protocol
(SNMP).

The entry management functions provide the capability to add, list, read,
delete, or modify entries on the calendar; including an event, To-Do, or
memo. These functions also include the capability for setting and reading
reminders. A reminder is an audio or visual cue that an event is about to
start or has occurred. In addition to these entry management functions,
the CSA provides a set of simple calendaring and scheduling functions to
provide an easy way for users of existing non-calendaring and scheduling
applications to add an entry to a calendar. For example, a user of a
project manager application can invoke these simple calendaring and
scheduling functions from within the application with the aid of the macro
language provided with the product. The function parameters for these
simple functions are string-based or integer-based to enable them to be
called from macro languages or application scripts. There are three simple
calendaring and scheduling functions to support adding events, To-Do's, or
memos to a calendar.

Broad Industry Support

The development of the CSA began with a birds-of-a-feather session at the
Electronic Messaging Association (EMA) conference in June 1993. Attendees
of the session identified two common problems with calendaring and
scheduling products; the lack of interoperability between different
products and the inability to leverage the calendaring and scheduling
services from within other groupware applications. XAPIA was suggested as
a group that might study these issues. Subsequently, the XAPIA held a
Calendaring and Scheduling Summit in August 1993 to gather information and
support for the work effort. The event attracted nearly 50 attendees
representing more than 30 companies. The XAPIA formed a Calendaring and
Scheduling technical subcommittee and within a year had produced a
specification approved by XAPIA members.

Additional support for CSA has come from other industry coalitions and
standards bodies. X/Open, the UNIX portability association, plans to
fast-track CSA for an X/Open standard. Previous collaborations between
XAPIA and X/Open have led to work accepted by international standards
bodies. The MHS Alliance Calendaring Project committed to align its early
work with the XAPIA work. The COSE/CDE Calendar Manager API participated
with the XAPIA in the definition of the CSA. Also referenced were the ISO
calendar standard and the Internet draft Chronos calendaring
specification.

Organizations participating on the definition of the CSA included AT&T,
Attachmate, The Boeing Company, Campbell Services, CE Software,
Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Aircraft, IBM, LinkAge Software, Lotus Development
Corporation, Microsoft, Microsystems Software, NetManage, Novell, ON
Technology, Oracle, RAM Mobile Data, SunSoft, Sundial Systems, Tandem, and
WordPerfect.

X.400 API Association

The XAPIA, an association of leading vendors and large end user
organizations, was formed in 1989 to aid users and vendors building
electronic messaging applications and networks. It has since extended its
reach to serve as the international forum to guide the evolution of APIs
for mail systems and mail-enabled applications. In five years, the XAPIA
has been a productive and influential organization. Three of its API
specifications have been approved as international standards by the IEEE.
Numerous products now on the market support XAPIA APIs. Other
organizations, including the EMA, have turned to the XAPIA as a forum to
develop technical solutions to current networking issues.

For More Information

The CSA is a publicly available specification. There is no charge for using
the interface specification. The documentation may be reproduced at no
charge. The CSA specification is available in an online electronic form in
CompuServe in the XAPIA section of the GENCOM forum.

For more information on XAPIA, contact Ed Owens, Chairman of the XAPIA, at
415-335-6646 or Janie Chang, XAPIA Communications, at 604-436-2922. For
more information on the CSA, contact Leslie Schroeder at 408-446-9158,
through the Internet at Ischroeder@wynd.net, or Leslie Schroeder Public
Relations & Marketing at 10151 Western Drive, Cupertino, CA 95014.

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