1. Methodology

The set of properties determined to be the minimum set for interoperability was chosen via discussion at CalConnect Roundtables and in conference calls of the USECASE Technical Committee. We used a three-pronged process to inform our selection of properties.

First, we conducted an informal survey of properties that are built into existing software products that feature manipulation of resources, which formed a starting point for further winnowing of properties. 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, scheduling, and project management products currently in use. The software applications are:

• Dotproject v.2x

• GroupWise 7

• Kplato

• Lotus Domino 7

• MeetingMaker 8.6

• Microsoft Exchange 2007

• Microsoft Project 2002

• Oracle Calendar

• Planner

• TaskJuggler

• Zimbra CS

Secondly, we created a set of use cases and from them extracted a plausible set of properties for the resources in the use cases.

Thirdly, during discussions we came to view resource interoperability as a case where a lack of structured data prevents transmission of useful information between systems. As we looked at attributes for calendar users, we observed a great degree of commonality between calendar user attributes, directory attributes, and vCard attributes. We also observed that implementations effectively repurpose user attributes for use by resources. Given this practical similarity between users and resources, we looked to vCard as a source for structured data that might aid interoperability in resources.

The result was a table of properties showing how many products used the property and the percentage of the total number of product that did so. (See Appendices)