Subject: Re: Session Scheduling

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 16:30:51 +0200

The functionality you list is a pretty good description of what SCIP 
and SIP can do. We are implementing a subset of that functionality 
(including user location, email notification, automatic acceptance, and 
interface to the phone network). We haven't worried about pagers, but 
http://www.mediawhse.com/eml2pgr/INFO.html has done that already...

> The invitee agent will act as a network secretary, representing and
> interfacing the user (invitee) with other networks agents or users for
> the scheduling of meetings. Obviously this agent must be permanent,
> running on a server reachable at any time. At a conference scheduling
> request, the invitee agent may (depending on local rules):
> 	- try to locate the user (logged, pager, phone), notify him of the
> invitation and interface him with the scheduling protocol for an immediate
> negotiation reply.
> 	- mail the invitation to the user for a further reply.
> 	- stand for the user, accepting or refusing the invitation and 
> negotiating the type of  the session (media, QoS) and the date of the
> meeting using its own agenda.
> 
> This agent may have other functions like :
> 	- answer to personal inquiries (locating the user, sending 
> business card a la Versit - http://www.versit.com, web home-page
> URL,)
> 	- receiving mail and pre-processing it (acknowledgment)
> The conference scheduling and invitation is not limited to MBone
> session; it may be used for (internet) telephone call, for physical
> meetings, for ISDN videoconference.
> 
> 
> First problem will be the relation with the session invitation protocol
> drafts; could we envisage an extension, or should it be a different
> protocol ?
> 
> Anyone interested ?
> 
> Amicalement,
> 
> 	Denis
> 
> Denis Bigorgne
> SEPT - Service d'Etudes communes de La Poste et de France Telecom
> [email-masked]
> phone: +33 31 75 92 29             fax: +33 31 75 06 31

---

From: [email-masked] (Ben Anderson)
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 17:27:32 +0000

At 2:56 pm 14/6/96, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>A calendar application could, as payload, carry invitation messages
>e.g. in SIP format.  (This is one of the beauties of a connectionless
>protocol such as SIP.)  We have to make sure, though, that the
>information in SIP invitations is sufficiently long-lived for this
>(e.g., by removing IP addresses and replacing them with host names).
>

this'd be cool - one can imagine a local 2-way communication between a
calendar and sdr based on SIP - after all, SDP = Simple Diary Protocol :-).
I'm not sure we need to extend SIP too much - the current reply/negotiation
framework might work *provided* we take into account the fact that the
final response could be days, even weeks later, and by some other medium.
This implies the initiating client being aware that the user is initiating
a 'schedule' SIP message and behaving accordingly.

I also have grave reservations about the 'automation' aspect of 'proxies'
and 'agents' - some work done here at LUT suggests that providing people
with automatic diary managers (in the context of distributed agent
research) can be problematic as people do actually like to have personal
control over their calanders...

Anyhow, this is a 'hot' topic in CSCW just now and it'd be good to see if
it can be 'played out' in MMUSIC.

cheers
ben.

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