Autonomous event generator

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10990930-B2
Application number	US-201715626489-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 19, 2017
Priority date	Jun 19, 2017
Publication date	Apr 27, 2021
Grant date	Apr 27, 2021

Abstract

Computerized devices search each of a group of different calendars of a group of attendees of a proposed event for an available timeslot within each of the calendars that meets boundary conditions specified for the proposed event. In response to failing to find an available time slot in common to all attendee calendars that meets the boundary conditions, the devices autonomously identify a common existing event scheduled within the calendars of the attendees that can accommodate the boundary conditions and add the new event to the existing event, or reschedule a previously scheduled event of one or more of the attendees to create a common, free timeslot for the new event where the event cannot be accommodated within an existing event.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
executing an automated scheduling assistant on a computerized device processor;
receiving event data, wherein the event data comprises a plurality of attendees, an agenda item, and an event completion date;
searching each of a plurality of calendars of each of the attendees for available time slots before the event completion date;
determining whether all the attendees have at least one available time slot in common within each of the calendars of the attendees that can accommodate a length of time required for a new event to accommodate the agenda item;
in response to determining that all of the attendees do not have at least one available time slot in common within the calendars of the attendees, the automated scheduling assistant autonomously selecting another time slot for rescheduling a previously scheduled event for a first of the attendees from a first time slot as a function of complying with a rule that is selected from the group consisting of preventing moving an event with an external attendee, preventing scheduling of the another time slot within a threshold time of another event scheduled within the calendars of the attendees, preventing a cancelation of an event with an attendee with a certain title, and preventing a cancelation of a recurring event;
the automated scheduling assistant autonomously rescheduling the previously scheduled event for the first of the attendees from the first time slot to the another time slot, wherein the rescheduling creates a free time slot within each of the plurality of calendars for all the attendees that spans the length of time required for the new event and includes the first time slot; and
the automated scheduling assistant autonomously scheduling an event that includes the agenda item during the free time slot within each of the calendars of the attendees.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
in response to determining that a common existing event is scheduled within each of the calendars of the attendees that can accommodate the length of time of required for the new event, adding the agenda item to the common existing event; and
in response to determining that a common existing event is scheduled within each of the calendars of the attendees that cannot accommodate the length of time of the agenda item, creating a revised event within each of the plurality of calendars of the attendees having a length of time that spans the common existing event and the length of time required for the new event, and adding the agenda item and agenda items of the common existing event to the revised event.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, in response to determining that all of the attendees do not have at least one available time slot in common within the calendars of the attendees:
analyzing the calendars of the attendees to determine relative likelihoods that each attendee will attend conflicting events that are scheduled within each attendee calendar and conflict with free slots available within the calendars of remaining others of the attendees;
canceling a one of the conflicting events that has a highest relative likelihood that an attendee will not attend, wherein the canceling creates a new commonly available time slot within each of the calendars of the attendees; and
scheduling an event that includes the agenda item during the new commonly available time slot within each of the calendars of the attendees.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
the automated scheduling assistant selecting the length of time required for the new event as a function of type of meeting identified within text content of the agenda item.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, in response to determining that all of the attendees do not have at least one available time slot in common within the calendars of the attendees:
determining priority rank values of available attendees within an organization of the available attendees; and
in response to determining that moving one of multiple preexisting events creates a common available time slot for all the available attendees, moving the preexisting event belonging to a lowest ranking attendee of the available attendees.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
analyzing the calendars of the attendees to determine a plurality of event times available for each of the attendees;
assigning an optimal value to each of the event times as a function of attendee attributes of the event times that are selected from the group consisting of priority rank values of available attendees, occurrence time within business hours for attendees, occurrence time within a time slot that has previously included events for attendees, and occurrence time within a time slot that has not previously included events for attendees; and
scheduling the event in a time slot having a highest assigned optimal value.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein some of the attendees are located in different time zones, and wherein the step of assigning optimal values to the plurality of event times is a function of occurrence time relative to business hours that are common to the locations of each of the attendees.

8. The method of claim 6 , further comprising assigning the optimal value to each of the event times as a function of a total number of the attendees that are available during the time slot and that meet the attendee attribute.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
integrating computer-readable program code into a computer system comprising the processor, a computer readable memory in circuit communication with the processor, and a computer readable storage medium in circuit communication with the processor; and
wherein the processor executes program code instructions stored on the computer-readable storage medium via the computer readable memory and thereby performs the executing the automated scheduling assistant, the receiving event data, the searching each of the plurality of calendars of each of the attendees for available time slots before the event completion date, the determining whether all the attendees have at least one available time slot in common within each of the calendars of the attendees that can accommodate the length of time required for the new event to accommodate the agenda item, the selecting via the automated scheduling assistant the another time slot for rescheduling the previously scheduled event for the first of the attendees from the first time slot, the autonomously rescheduling via the automated scheduling assistant the previously scheduled event for the first of the attendees from the first time slot to the another time slot, and the autonomously scheduling via the automated scheduling assistant the event that includes the agenda item.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the computer-readable program code is provided as a service in a cloud environment.

11. A system, comprising:
a processor;
a computer readable memory in circuit communication with the processor; and
a computer readable storage medium in circuit communication with the processor;
wherein the processor executes program instructions stored on the computer-readable storage medium via the computer readable memory and thereby:
executes a scheduling assistant;
receives event data, wherein the event data comprises a plurality of attendees, an agenda item, and an event completion date;
searches each of a plurality of calendars of each of the attendees for available time slots before the event completion date;
determines whether all the attendees have at least one available time slot in common within each of the calendars of the at

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Cleaver James D
• Donovan Mark
• Lea Stephen J
• Mcguire Michael J

Classifications

• G06Q10/1093 Primary

  Calendar-based scheduling for persons or groups · CPC title

• H04L67/10

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title

• G06Q10/1095 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic