iMeet

Introduction

iMeet is a Netscape Livewire-based application that lets employees easily find and reserve meeting space. A room database containing information such as physical location, in-room resources, and maximum occupancy is used to search for and reserve meeting rooms. Some of the key features of the iMeet application include:


Contact Information

This application was developed by Ingenia Communications Corporation. If you have any technical questions or comments regarding this application please feel free to contact the development team (imeet@ingenia.com). Questions about Ingenia Communications, should be directed to info@ingenia.com.

Ingenia Communications is a Canadian internet consulting company specializing in interactive WWW-based applications, network security, and Intranet application design. Ingenia began operations in 1993 and since that time has rapidly expanded to include over 70 professionals with offices in Ottawa (Ontario), Victoria (BC), Toronto (Ontario), and Fredericton (New Brunswick). Ingenia clients include Newbridge Networks, the Canadian House of Commons, Bell Global Solutions, Sun Microsystems of Canada, Canadian Olympics Association, and CANARIE

If you wish to contact Ingenia Communications, please send your correspondance to:

eMail info@ingenia.com
Snail Mail Ingenia Communications Corporation
CTTC Building, Suite 4200
Carelton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1S 5R1
WWW http://www.ingenia.com/
Telephone(613) 526-2200
Fax(613) 526-2703


Technical Support

Though iMeet is not formally supported by Ingenia Communications Corporation, bug reports and suggestions for improvement may be mailed to:

kwooding@ingenia.com


How to Use this Application

Before using the iMeet application, it is first necessary to Log in to the application.

After you have logged in you are presented with your personal calendar . This is the default screen. The toolbars at the top of the page allows you to navigate to other areas of the iMeet application.

The other main areas of the iMeet application are:

Log In

The Log in screen is fairly straightforward.

To access the iMeet user application, simply enter your username and password in the areas provided.

To access administration functions, enter the admin username and password instead.

You may also choose to change your password from this screen.

My Calendar

This screen displays all meetings that you are attending for the current day. These are meetings you are invited to, and meetings that you have originated. If you have originated any of the meetings shown for the day, then you will see both edit and delete options. These allow you to change the meeting parameters or cancel the meeting outright.

There are four ways of changing the date you are looking at.

A number of actions are possible from the My Calendar Screen:

Clicking on the meeting description hypertext will take you to the meeting detail screen for that meeting.

Clicking on the room name hypertext will take you to the meeting room information screen for that room.

Clicking on the floorplan icon next to a meeting will display a map with the meeting room highlighted

Clicking on the week icon will display a summary of all your meetings for the week.

Meeting Room Information

This page allows you to select a meeting room to view. Once you have selected a room and have clicked on the view button, the iMeet application displays all information pertaining to this particular room. This includes information such as the maximum occupancy of the room, the equipment available for use in the room, and all meetings booked for that day in that room.

The date may be changed in a manner similar to the User Calendar screen.

Also like the User Calendar screen, clicking on the week icon will display a summary of all the meeting booked in that room for the week. Clicking on an individual meeting bar inside that applet will take you to the Meeting Detail screen.

Book a Meeting

This page allows you to reserve a meeting room. The screen should be fairly intuitive. The date of the meeting is displayed at the top of the page. You can change this date either by typing a new date in the field, clicking on the calendar applet, or by using the navigation arrows at the top of the screen. In addition to specifing the date you must indicate the location, start time, and end time for the meeting. You can specify the start and end time in two different ways. You can either select the time from the drop lists, or you can specify the time using the java applet to the right of these two fields. Using this applet should be intuitive. Simply place the green marker under the desired start time, and the red marker under the desired end time. Clicking on OK will cause the drop lists on the Book a Meeting page to update to the values you had selected in the Java applet.

To simplify the task of selecting employee's names from a potentially long list, a special input widget is supplied. The buttons labeled with the letters of the alphabet limit the list to last names begining with the letter clicked and any names that follow. For example, clicking on the button labeled 'L' will limit the list of employees to show only those employees whose last names start with a letter between L and Z. To invite an employee, simply select their name from the list on the left and click on the right arrow button. (Note that this box supports multiple selection, so you can hold down the Ctrl key to select more than one name at a time.) If you invite an employee and then realize they shouldn't be invited, simply select their name from the list on the right and click on the left arrow button.

The last thing to do in the Book a Meeting page is to enter a public description for the meeting (for example, "Weekly Marketing Meeting") and a private description which can only be seen by the person who originated the meeting, and people attending the meeting.

Once all of this information has been specified click on the button labeled Book to process the reservation. The button labeled Cancel will return you to your daily schedule.

Search for a Meeting Room

An added feature of the iMeet application is that it allows you to search for a meeting room that is the closest match based on criteria you specify. If you are not sure which meeting room best fits your purposes you can click on the search button. This loads a page that allows you to specify when you would like the meeting to start, how many people will be attending, what equipment you will require, which building you will want the meeting in, and the duration of the meeting. Once the search criteria are specified, and you click on the button labeled Find a Room, the iMeet application runs a quick search for the meeting rooms that best fit your requirements.

The results of this query are displayed on a page that shows you in order of closest matches which rooms best fit your purposes. If you see a room you would like, select a start time from the drop list and click on book. This will return you to the Book a Meeting page with default values filled in based on your choices in the search routine.

Meeting Detail

This screen shows all the relevant information for a particular meeting, including the date and time, meeting originator, public and private description text, meeting attendees, and equipment available in the meeting room.

TIP: To jump directly to the meeting detail screen, select the hypertext meeting description from either the My Calendar or Meeting Room Information screens.

Administration Functions

The Administration functions are actually an entire database administration application build into iMeet. In addition to regular application users, there is one special user account, the admin account, that allows administration activities to take place.

Typical Administrarion duties include:

To use the administration functions, log in as user admin at the Log In screen

Change Password

This screen does just what you would expect it to do. To change you password, you must first enter your username and old password, and then a new password twice. Your passowrd is only changed if you have correctly entered you old password, and the two new passwords match.

If you forget your password, you will have to get the admin user to reset it for you.

Log Out

By clicking on Log Out, all information pertaining to your identity is deleted from the current session and you are returned to the Log In screen. This ensures that no other user can come along and delete or book meetings in your name.