425343 - No support for resource (Meeting/Conference Rooms) booking and scheduling

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, enhancement)

Description

[Siddharth Sharma]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13
Build Identifier: TB version 2.0.0.12 (20080213); Lightening build 2008032619

Outlook 2003 has an option to add meeting/conference rooms as resources in order to book them. Essentially the rooms have email addresses and if the are free they accept the invite. There is a provision for seeing which ones are free and which ones are not (but I think this is due to the microsoft exchange server). This is one of the for most reasons due to which huge number of my colleagues are avoiding a transition from outlook to thunderbird+lightning

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

IMO this bug is INVALID, as this is a functionality that cannot be provided on the client level, but must be implemented on a server (e.g. Exchange). I don't know whether stuff like this isn't already possible on a CalDAV server or Sun's Java Calendar Server that we both support. 

Comment 2

[Daniel Boelzle [:dbo]]

I've often seen resource booking been implemented separate to the calendar system, but RFC 2445 defines user types (CUTYPE) for resources, so it's quite easy to use virtual calendar users for resources. Just invite such virtual users and the resources are booked. However, what's lacking are resource management facilities, and I think that's the primary reason why those are implemented separate to the calendar system.

[1] <http://tools.ietf.org/rfcmarkup?doc=draft-ietf-calsify-rfc2445bis-08#section-3.2.3>

So I am asking myself if and what we could do about resources, with sticking to RFC 2445. If resources appear as ordinary mail-addresses / attendees, calendar may determine the correct CUTYPE by corporate directory lookup. Or, more simple, we could enhance the "Invite Attendees" pane allowing the organizer to specify the CUTYPE.

Comment 3

[Siddharth Sharma]

I am not changing the state of the bug but I still believe the feature to send an invite to a Room/Resource should not be infeasible along with acknowledging a confirmation/rejection. Ideal case would be to have support for the exchange server. *Thinking whether that is too much to ask*

Comment 4

[Lars Wohlfahrt (thetux)]

I think dbo is right. Modification of Invite Attendees seems best.

Comment 5

[Daniel Boelzle [:dbo]]

I think we need to separate things here:
- Inviting virtual resources by iTIP/iMIP should already work (apart from the Outlook issues and missing methods which are tracked in other bugs)
- UI enhancements to tag attendees as "resource". This may affect both the invite attendees dialog and maybe the read-only dialog where the PARTSTATs of attendees are shown. Christian, could you imagine a sensible UI?

Comment 6

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Siddharth, please don't set the '+' flag. This is reserved for release drivers.

Comment 7

[James Andrewartha]

I tested resource booking with Bedework (which is just an auto-accept) using CalDAV scheduling and it worked. I created a Bedwork user upstairsmeetingroom, invited [e-mail] in Lightning and the invitation was accepted.

Comment 8

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Attachment: Show icons for different CUTYPES

Comment 9

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

This patch at least shows different icon types. I will need new icons for RESOURCE, GROUP, and ROOM userTypes as well as the icons in a disabled state.

This does not provide a way to select meeting rooms from a list or such, since there is no standardized way to do so. We should file a new bug when such a standard is known or created.

Comment 10

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Andreas, any update on this? I would like to get this in before the next merge.

Comment 11

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Sorry, been occupied by other bugs. When is the merge specifically?

Comment 12

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

August 27th

Comment 13

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Attachment: Screenshot - v1

Comment 14

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: resource icon

Comment 15

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: group icon

Comment 16

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: room icon

Comment 17

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Thanks for the graphics! Could you elaborate on why you chose a checkmark for a "resource" ?

Comment 18

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Given the merge is today, I'm going to push this patch as is first, then update the icons afterwards.

Comment 19

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Pushed to comm-central changeset f8c22d29debf

Comment 20

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #17)
> Thanks for the graphics! Could you elaborate on why you chose a checkmark
> for a "resource" ?

To be all frank, because that was the best I could come up with.
I'm happy to draw something else if anyone has a better idea what to do for that.


http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=resource
https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=938&q=resource&oq=resource&gs_l=img.3..0l10.903.2939.0.3314.8.5.0.3.3.0.69.302.5.5.0...0.0...1ac.lZrf2QOZg24

Comment 21

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Since a resource is usually something like a beamer or flipchart, I'd suggest using something like that. Not sure if its possible to do in that little px though. I'd prefer beamer over flipchart.

Comment 22

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

Comment on attachment 637654 [details] [diff] [review]
Show icons for different CUTYPES

Clearing ui-review flag as this patch has been checked in two months ago.

Comment 23

[ingo.goeppert]

Tested with lightning 1.9b2 and tb 17.0b2: There are no icons/blank icons for resource/group/room (it looks like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=654658). In which version are the ions included?