1 Cross-Organizational Calendaring: Future Trends A Ferris Research Teleconference 26 February 2003: 8:30am Pacific, 11:30am Eastern, 4:30pm UK, 5:30pm Central European

2 Agenda Moderator: Nick Shelness, Ferris Research Speakers: –Pat Egen, IETF CalSch WG/Patricia Egen Consulting –Andre Courtemanch, Oracle –Jensen Harris & Paul Tischhauser, Microsoft Audience Q&A: hit “1” to ask questions 9:30am Pacific: wrap-up

3 Ferris Research Market & technology research in & collaborative technologies. Eg: – , presence, availability, instant messaging, mobile messaging, other collaborative technologies Clients –IT departments of large firms –Software vendors –Service providers

4 Technologies We Track , list servers, instant messaging, discussion groups, fax servers, unified messaging Group scheduling Desktop conferencing, online classrooms Content security, including virus control & secure messaging Directories, people finders Document management Wireless & handheld connectivity

5 IETF Calendar & Scheduling Protocols – Current Status Pat Egen Co-Chair - IETF Calsch Working Group President - Patricia Egen Consulting llc

6 Published IETF C&S RFCs RFC 3283 Guide to Internet Calendaring RFC 2445 Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) RFC 2446 iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) –Events, busytime, to-dos and journal entries RFC 2447 iCalendar Message-based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP) RFC 2739 Calendar attributes for vCard & LDAP

7 What Do They Do? iCalendar –Defines syntax and semantics of calendar objects and attributes –Carried by iTIP or iMIP iTIP –Defines the format and rules for transport- independent exchange of requests and responses between a publisher and respondents –Eg, an event organizer and other attendees

8 What Do They Do? iMIP –iMIP is an iTIP binding –Defines how to encode and transport iTIP commands and responses in MIME messages Summary: –Define calendar objects with iCalendar –Publish and respond with iTIP –Carry these requests and responses via with iMIP

9 Status of Interop Testing iCalendar, iTIP and iMIP are in interop. testing –3 interops. have been held to date –Currently working on next “virtual” interop. –Shooting for movement to next standard level (from proposed -> draft) by 4th Qtr, –7 vendors and 2 open source groups have expressed interest in attending future interops. After interops., minor changes may need to be made to RFCs. This will be followed by an IETF approval cycle, before new RFCs are issued

10 Calendar Access Protocol Current work in progress For calendar management –Calendar User Agent (CUA) interaction with a Calendar Service (CS) –CS to CS interaction for calendar management A real-time protocol. CUAs and CSs must be inter- connected for the duration of a CAP interchange CAP status –Looking for last call by 4Q2003 –Then vendor implementation, interop. testing

Mary Jack Bob Mary asks her CUA to invite Bob to a meeting. Her CAP-based CUA issues a request (1) to her calendar service. This is relayed as a CAP request (2) to Bob’s calendar service, which, because Bob doesn’t use a CAP-based CUA, transforms the invitation into an iMIP request (3) that is delivered as to Bob’s Client. Bob instructs his client to delegate attendance to Jack. His client informs Mary of this via an iMIP response (4) delivered as to her Calendar Service. His client also informs Jack of this, via a separate iMIP request (5) delivered as to Jack’s Wireless PDA. Mary will again use CAP (1) to read Bob’s response.

12 What’s On The Horizon? An XML iCalendar representation An RDF iCalendar representation (W3C effort) Moving Internet calendaring & scheduling into the mainstream Increased interest from vendors and end users –User community will drive the requirements for standards –Calendaring not quite at the level of or Web usage but rapidly approaching that level

13 Oracle Collaboration Suite André Courtemanche Vice President Time Management Platform Oracle Corporation

14 Our Experience Vendors are adopting standards…slowly –Proprietary protocols & formats remain the norm in commercially available products –Behind-the-scenes areas such as recurrence rules and time zone information are complex Customers suffering from co-existence pains –Scheduling workflow –Free/busy information –Mobile device access –Application integration

15 Oracle Collaboration Suite R2 Oracle Calendar supports the iCalendar data model –Events, tasks –Import/export –SyncML synchronization –SDK / Web services Scheduling workflow through all Oracle Calendar clients – invitations & notifications with iCalendar attachments in.ics file format –Desktop clients, Web client, Connector for Outlook

16 Oracle Collaboration Suite R2 Oracle Connector for Outlook leverages C&S standards supported by Outlook –Key element in solving co-existence with Exchange –Sharing of free/busy information via.vfb file format – invitations with.ics attachments Integration with new Collaboration Suite components such as iMeeting, wireless, & voice

17 Oracle Calendar: Futures Full iTIP/iMIP implementation Adoption of CAP Monitor open source initiatives Web services Support for Office 2003 Sharing calendar information across Oracle’s E-Business Suite Continued cross platform support

18 Jensen Harris Senior Program Manager – Outlook Paul Tischhauser Program Manager – Exchange MS Outlook & Exchange

19 Standards Support in Outlook iMIP support in Outlook for sending & receiving meeting invitations & responses –Outlook 2000 – early iMIP draft –Outlook 2002 – full RFC 2447 iCalendar objects employed in Outlook 2000 for publishing free/busy times to HTTP & FTP servers –Not an IETF standard

20 Standards Support Internet free/busy time service in Outlook 2002 and later –Publish/view free/busy times over the Internet –Requires Passport –Only SMTP address needed for lookup –iCalendar-based –Not an IETF standard Improved iMIP support in Outlook 2003 –Better interoperability with other vendors –Better MIME handling

21 Outlook Calendaring: Futures Continuing to invest in standards-based calendaring in future versions Innovations and features are always based on customer demand Evaluating standards as needed to fill customer needs in future versions

22 Standards Support in Exchange For Exchange Server 2000 and 2003 Full iMIP support through native MIME support Partial iTIP interop support –Support meeting request/response –Eg, VEVENT, VTIMEZONE –No task assignment, free/busy –Eg, VTODO, VFREEBUSY

23 Standards Support Store automatically converts calendar info. to the correct format for client programs –Outlook, OWA, CDOEX, etc. Provide API to send calendar information to any iMIP compliant CUA

24 Commentary Nick Shelness Consulting Analyst Ferris Research, Inc.

25 Demand It was clear quite early on that had to operate not just within organizations but between organizations Today, this need is much less apparent for calendaring & scheduling (C&S) systems As with instant messaging, people may have to start using inter-organizational C&S to discover its utility When will this be an option?

26 Technical Barriers The constructs of different proprietary C&S systems are not fully compatible The constructs of iCalendar differ again from those of proprietary C&S systems This is especially true of repeating events, availability representations, and time zone constructs

27 A Solutions Roadmap For the time being, translation will be required. This will work pretty well for core C&S features, but peripheral C&S features may break Over time, proprietary C&S systems will natively support iCalendar constructs just as proprietary systems now natively support Internet constructs (addresses, MIME, text/html) Multi-vendor iMIP support is in place now CAP adoption remains an unknown

28 Current Vendor Status Notes & Domino R6 support iMIP –Notes generates multi-part/alternative MIME with text/plain, text/html and iMIP encoding of C&S objects plus an iMIP attachment, for all MIME recipients. Domino converts incoming iMIP into native Notes format Outlook & Exchange 2003 support iMIP –Outlook 2003 generates & consumes iMIP encoded C&S objects for MIME recipients & from MIME senders Oracle Collaboration Suite supports iMIP –OCS generates and consumes iMIP messages

29 The Future User demand will drive: –Improvements to iMIP translation –Migration to support of native iCalendar constructs, and –Implementation of CAP

30 Q & A Hit “1” on phone pad to ask a question

31 Wrap-Up Evaluations Next teleconference: –March 26, 8.30am PST –“Integrating Presence into Business Applications: Future Trends” –Register at