Difficulty Managing W3C Calendar for Complex Meeting Requirements

[hlflanagan]

Description of the Problem:

I have specific scheduling requirements for FedID Community Group (CG) and Working Group (WG) meetings, but the W3C calendar interface makes it cumbersome to manage them effectively. My needs are as follows:

1. Pacific-Friendly CG Call:

   • Occurs every 4 weeks on Monday.

2. WG Call:

   • Occurs every 4 weeks on Tuesday (the same week as the CG call).

3. Joint CG/WG Call:

   • Scheduled for all remaining weeks of the year, using the same time slot as the WG call.

To accommodate this, I currently create three separate recurring series:

• One for the Pacific-friendly CG meetings.
• One for the WG meetings.
• One for the joint CG/WG meetings.

However, since the joint CG/WG call overlaps with the WG call every 4 weeks, I manually delete the overlapping joint meeting entry. This process has the following issues:

• Excessive Notification Emails: Subscribers receive too many unnecessary email updates.
• Confusing Calendar Entries: Deleted but still visible calendar entries lead to confusion about the actual meeting schedule.
• Significant Manual Effort: Managing the overlap and manually resolving conflicts is time-consuming.

Expected Behavior:

• A streamlined way to schedule overlapping recurring meetings without triggering excessive notifications or leaving behind visible deleted entries.

Actual Behavior:

• The current system generates excessive notifications and causes visible calendar clutter, creating confusion for subscribers.

Request for Improvement: I would like the calendar interface to support the following more efficiently:

1. A recurring series with exceptions (e.g., allowing me to suppress certain entries without causing confusion).
2. Tools to handle overlapping meetings in a way that avoids excessive notifications and visual clutter.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Schedule a recurring meeting series for CG calls every 4 weeks on Monday.
2. Schedule another recurring series for WG calls every 4 weeks on Tuesday.
3. Schedule a third series for joint CG/WG calls for all remaining weeks, overlapping the WG call every 4 weeks.
4. Delete overlapping joint CG/WG calls manually.
5. Observe the volume of notifications and visible deleted calendar entries.

Impact:

• Causes confusion for group members.
• Creates unnecessary administrative overhead.