Calendar Agent System Under the guidance of Dilip Maripuri B.Sc. (Hons) CSE Final Year Project Presentation June 12, 2006 Yannick Lew Yaw Fung Dilraj Mathoora University of Mauritius 1 Calendar Agent System

Agenda 2 Calendar Agent System The Problem Solution Evaluation

The Meeting Scheduling Problem 3 Calendar Agent System Time-consuming Complex negotiations Conflicting schedules: –Time constraints –Private preferences involved

Typical Negotiation Scenario 4 Ellie Tim John Meeting on Monday next from 10h to 11h? No, I can’t! Give me another date. Next Tuesday, 10h30 to 11h30? Ok John, Meeting Tuesday next from 10h30 to 11h30? Busy, another date? Calendar Agent System

Objectives of our System 5 Management of meetings efficiently Automatic negotiation of appointments extraction containing meeting requests Support for time-table management of lecturers Calendar Agent System

Overview of our System Software agent technology –Each user has one personalised agent Manage and schedule meetings Schedule via Timetable input 6 Calendar Agent System

Functional Requirements - Facilities Registration for a mail-agent service Scanning of POP3 accounts Extraction of meeting scheduling information in s 7 Calendar Agent System

Functional Requirements – Meeting Management 8 Calendar Agent System 1.Schedule meetings 2.Propose alternative dates 3.Negotiate meetings automatically 4.Cancel meetings 5.Synchronize schedules 6.Alarm notification

Functional Requirements – Time-table Management Feeding in of module information sheet Generation of academics’ timetables Viewing of public schedules 9 Calendar Agent System

Non-Functional Requirements 10 Portability Requirements: Login from home or remote locations Cross-platform Security Requirements: Authentication using hashed passwords (similar to CHAP technique) Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) Calendar Agent System

Non-Functional Requirements Performance Requirements: Time to negotiate meetings should be ideally less than two minutes 11 Calendar Agent System

System Architecture – P2P 12 Calendar Agent System

System Architecture – Mobile 13 Calendar Agent System

Classic Client-Server Architecture 14 Calendar Agent System

System Architecture - Conceptual Diagram JADE Server Internet / Intranet Mail Agent And Mail Server Database Computers with Desktop Agents Calendar Agent System 16 Agent 2 Web Server Agent 1

Technical Specifications JADE Agent platform 16 Reliable, Proven Good technical support Free, Opensource Calendar Agent System

Technical Specifications Java Java Programming language 18 JADE’s native language JCA API (SHA-1 Hashing) JDBC API (Database manipulation) Calendar Agent System

Technical Specifications HSQLDB DBMS 19 Embedded Server HSQLDB raw performance benchmarks Calendar Agent System

System Architecture - Conceptual Diagram JADE Server Internet / Intranet Database Computers with Desktop Agents Calendar Agent System 16 Agent 2 Web Server Agent 1

Conceptual Diagram Database Server Agents and data store Web Server Internet / Intranet Mail Agent And Mail Server Computers with Desktop Agents Calendar Agent System 16 Apache James mail server iCal4j API JavaMail API GATE with ANNIE Apache Tomcat server

Classic C-S Architecture 21 Ellie makes meeting request to DA ACL message containing meeting details Negotiations Results DA informs back Ellie DA informs user Ellie Tim John Calendar Agent System Tim’s SA John’s SA Ellie’s SA RA

ACL message structure 22 Calendar Agent System ((action (agent-identifier :name :addresses (sequence (RendezVous :initiator :description "Project Discussion" :duration :startTime T Z :endTime T Z :expiryTime T Z :optimalTime T Z :meetingId "meetID: " :participants (set (Person :agentLocalName timserver) (Person :agentLocalName johnserver)) :priority "Normal meeting" :recurring NONE :recurringDays 0 :status “CONFIRMED" :resourceList (set (Resource :type ROOM)))))

ContractNet IP 22 Calendar Agent System

Mail Agent 21 Calendar Agent System Database Mail Server Scans database Gets new mails Getting list of mail UIDs Finding new UIDs Scans attachments Text/calendar Text/plain Text/html Details sent

Key Issues SQL injection Behaviour concurrency Error-handling with agents 22 Calendar Agent System

Assumptions and Limitations Week-ends restriction Will not schedule on the same current date Recurrent meeting types limited Timetables generated at beginning Recurrent meetings are private 23 Calendar Agent System

Future Works New meeting strategies Integration with mobile devices – JADE LEAP Advanced Web facilities Better information extraction techniques for s Exclusion list for s (Spam) 24 Calendar Agent System

Individual Contributions 25 Features Contributions YannickDilraj 1Automatic creation of agents at the server through Web 2 Meeting Management (Request meetings, cancel, synchronize calendar, alarm notification, update preferences,…) 3Meeting scheduling and negotiation (ContractNet) algorithms 4Viewing of public portion of academics’ calendar through Web 5Implemented JADE behaviours for Server and Desktop agents 6Automatic checking of s on mail servers 7Developed the Swing-based GUI for the user 8 Registering accounts to benefit from the mail agent services Calendar Agent System

Individual Contributions 25FeaturesContributions YannickDilraj 9Elaboration of agent Interaction Protocols (IP) 10Generation of timetables from MIS 11Feeding in of module information sheets 12Resource Management and Scheduling 13University timetable management Calendar Agent System