1. Methodology

This is an informal survey of properties that are built into existing software products that have resource use and/or management features. The software products were not selected by any formal process, but were those available to which committee participants had access. However, we believe these to be a fair representation of the types of calendaring products currently in use and they include several that are either established or are ascendant in the industry.

The applications surveyed are selected from the domains of calendaring software, groupware, and project management software written for the Microsoft Windows, MacOSX, and Linux operating systems. They are:

1. Dotproject v2x (web-based open source)

2. Microsoft Project 2002 (Microsoft Windows)

3. Kplato (Linux)

4. Planner (Linux)

5. TaskJuggler (Linux)

6. OracleCalendar (MSWindows, MacOSX, Linux)

7. GroupWise 7 (MSWindows, MacOSX)

8. Lotus Domino 7 (MSWindows, MacOSX)

9. Microsoft Exchange 2007 (MSWindows)

10. MeetingMaker 8.6 (MSWindows, MacOSX)

11. ZimbraCS (web-based, MSWindows)

We surveyed the applications and their administrative documentation to determine whether resources were a part of their product and what attributes were used for resources. This information was placed in a spreadsheet with an appropriate indicator of use to allow comparisons across the various applications. Using a grid made it easy to determine points of intersection where applications use the same or similar attributes.