1. Fields of the Invention
The present invention relates to visualization tools generally, and more particularly, to a visualization tool for providing indications of user invitation status for on-line events such as collaborations, meetings, etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Using client-server email/collaboration software, for example Lotus Notes ®, a user (the organizer) can schedule a meeting/event which appears in the calendar of other users. When the meeting is scheduled, invitations are sent to the potential attendees and the recipient has the choice of, for example in Lotus Notes ®: accept, decline, tentatively accept, delegate or propose a new time.
Based on the number of responses that an organizer receives, the organizer may decide to confirm or cancel the meeting depending on likely attendance. Spaces for the meeting may be on a first-come-first-served basis and so later acceptances may get rejected.
There are the following problems and deficiencies with this system:
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an apparatus for providing a visualization of meeting invitation status that addresses the aforementioned deficiencies.
The above disadvantages or drawbacks have been eliminated by the present invention, which includes a method for generating a display image to indicate a meeting acceptance status for on-line users invited to a meeting, comprising:
a) sending, via a communication link, two or more invitations of the meeting to respective two or more invitees for the meeting;
b) receiving, at a host device, respective responses associated with each of the two or more invitees, each the responses indicating a decline or acceptance attendance status of each respective invitee;
c) processing, at the host device, the received responses and generating a display representing anonymous information about overall invitation status of at least each the respective responding invitees, the display having one or more portions, each portion having one or more display attributes, each attribute representing information concerning the meeting and indicating a current overall invitation status; and
d) communicating the generated display to each of the two or more and other invitees via an on-line display device associated with each invitee.
According to the present invention, a user sends an email indicating “yes” (or using the “accept meeting” feature on calendar server—that in effect would usually be sending an email or communicating to the calendar server) and then other invitees will see generated anonymous information about overall invitation status. Anonymous data is provided pertaining to invitees and their overall status without linking personal details to the information. Overall means the entire collection of the anonymous data. Therefore it may be possible to visualize that 10 people from Department A, 3 people from Department B and 2 people from Management have accepted the meeting invite without divulging who the people are. This could persuade a potential invitee from Department A as it could indicate relevance to their job role and conversely dissuade an invitee from Management as they can see there will already be Management presence.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the present invention, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate embodiments of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention. In the drawings,
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The advantage of the present invention is that, over time, a client display interface can actually indicate to users that a scheduled meeting is getting more popular by providing a color-coded display indicating increased interest in the meeting. The display interface 22 in
Another embodiment of the present invention is that “acceptance” isn't a binary or tertiary concept but a percentage, e.g. 0% is total decline/not interested and 100% is total acceptance/very interested. This embodiment is sufficient for large numbers of people deciding on an issue or social events, for example.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a person can have a large weighting to indicate an important person attending. For example, at display interface 50 in
Generating a colored display interface at calendar server 300 is straightforward. For example, a pie-chart in Microsoft ® Excel ® can be an example of this. A method for a more complete implementation where acceptance are grouped would be:
1. Divide the acceptance into segments or groups, e.g., by departments in a company, by job titles, by ranks, or by geography of each participant. For example, if a meeting was for sales, development, and marketing and there were 100 invitees from sales, 50 invitees from development, and 50 invitees from marketing, then there would be 3 segments: one segment, which covers 50% image area, for sales and two segments, which each covers 25% image area, for development and marketing.
2. Divide each image area into sub-image area representing each participant and color according to acceptance value (e.g., green=0%/decline, yellow=50%/tentative, red=100%/accept). Plotting acceptances in a sorted order make for a more informative display.
The extra/enhanced information can be generated through collection and manipulation of the invite responses. By applying certain rule sets to the information provided in the response, it is possible to visualize areas through a client display interface. Then, the information can be presented back to the attendee anonymously. In addition, a calendar server within in an organization can look up meeting invite information regarding attendees, e.g., job roles and department information, from an internal directory server. Hence, in another embodiment, the present invention can provide extra information to meeting attendees via display attributes, while keeping the information anonymous. The information can be based on
Although the preferred embodiments of the present invention have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes and substitutions can be made therein without departing from spirit and scope of the inventions as defined by the appended claims. Variations described for the present invention can be realized in any combination desirable for each particular application. Thus particular limitations, and/or embodiment enhancements described herein, which may have particular advantages to a particular application need not be used for all applications. Also, not all limitations need be implemented in methods, systems and/or apparatus including one or more concepts of the present invention.
The present invention can be realized in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. A typical combination of hardware and software could be a general purpose computer system with a computer program that, when being loaded and executed, controls the computer system such that it carries out the methods described herein. The present invention can also be embedded in a computer program product, which comprises all the features enabling the implementation of the methods described herein, and which—when loaded in a computer system—is able to carry out these methods.
Computer program means or computer program in the present context include any expression, in any language, code or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a system having an information processing capability to perform a particular function either directly or after conversion to another language, code or notation, and/or reproduction in a different material form.
Thus the invention includes an article of manufacture which comprises a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing a function described above. The computer readable program code means in the article of manufacture comprises computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the steps of a method of this invention. Similarly, the present invention may be implemented as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing a function described above. The computer readable program code means in the computer program product comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect one or more functions of this invention.
Furthermore, the present invention may be implemented as a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for causing one or more functions of this invention.
It is noted that the foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent objects and embodiments of the present invention. This invention may be used for many applications. Thus, although the description is made for particular arrangements and methods, the intent and concept of the invention is suitable and applicable to other arrangements and applications. It will be clear to those skilled in the art that modifications to the disclosed embodiments can be effected without departing from the spirt and scope of the invention. The described embodiments ought to be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the invention. Other beneficial results can be realized by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention in ways known to those familiar with the art.