1. 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

2. Agenda 2 Calendar Agent System The Problem Solution Evaluation

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

4. 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

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

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

7. Functional Requirements - E-mail Facilities Registration for a mail-agent service Scanning of POP3 email accounts Extraction of meeting scheduling information in e-mails 7 Calendar Agent System

8. 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

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

10. 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) http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1334/9.htm. Calendar Agent System

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

12. System Architecture – P2P 12 Calendar Agent System

13. System Architecture – Mobile 13 Calendar Agent System

14. Classic Client-Server Architecture 14 Calendar Agent System

15. 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

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

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

18. Technical Specifications HSQLDB DBMS 19 Embedded Server HSQLDB raw performance benchmarks www.hsqldb.org Calendar Agent System

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

20. 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

21. 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

22. ACL message structure 22 Calendar Agent System ((action (agent-identifier :name elliedesktop@mypc:11111/JADE :addresses (sequence http://mypc:1045/acc)) (RendezVous :initiator ellieserver@serverpc:1099/JADE :description "Project Discussion" :duration 3600000 :startTime 20060509T050000000Z :endTime 20060509T060000000Z :expiryTime 20060511T060000000Z :optimalTime 20060326T144617734Z :meetingId "meetID: 11433843777341212260.23751128268878519" :participants (set (Person :agentLocalName timserver) (Person :agentLocalName johnserver)) :priority "Normal meeting" :recurring NONE :recurringDays 0 :status “CONFIRMED" :resourceList (set (Resource :type ROOM)))))

23. ContractNet IP 22 Calendar Agent System

24. 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

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

26. 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

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

28. 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 e-mails on mail servers 7Developed the Swing-based GUI for the user 8 Registering e-mail accounts to benefit from the mail agent services Calendar Agent System

29. 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