Goals
- Schedule meetings for WG/IG/CG/BG/AB/TAG/TF
- Schedule joint meetings
- Send calendar invites to participants
- Attach additional information (agenda, join instructions, minutes, ...)
- Provide a Web view of the calendar
- ... And more
See the Use cases and Requirements page and
initial specifications
for more information.
Discovery Phase
Alternatives
- third-party CalDAV services (Nextcloud, SoGO, Google Agenda, ...)
- home-grown tool
- a combination of those
A complete report is available.
Third-party services - Pros
- Support CalDAV allowing to create and edit meetings from local clients such as Thunderbird
- Support recurring meetings
- Support invitations and reminders
- Support public sharing of calendars
Third-party services - Cons
- Varying and generally limited integration of group calendaring
- Poor integration with the rest of our ecosystem
- Client support of the CalDAV varies greatly
- Lack of structure to add additional information
- No way to restrict some information to some users (meeting password for example)
- Privacy issue, exposing calendars publicly also exposes participants' email addresses
Home-grown service - Pros
- Easier to integrate with the rest of our ecosystem
- A single UI for everyone, synonym of fewer headaches
- Possibility to structure information
- Possibility to restrict access to confidential or personal information
Home-grown service - Cons
- Very little CalDAV support
- Recurring meetings are hard
Discovery Phase - Conclusion
- Custom solution
- More flexibility
- Better integration
- Not extremely hard to implement (with the notable exception of recurring meetings)
Development Phase
Already started, First version expected early next year:
- Meeting scheduling by chairs and staff contacts
- Sending email invitations by email, with attached ical file
- Web-based view per group
- Web-based view of meetings your are invited to
- Export as ics files to view in calendaring software
- Likely no recurring meetings but at least some alternatives to not make them too painful to manage