International Business Machines Corporation

Lotus Development Corporation

Steven Robert Beckhardt

John Banks-Binici

Raymond Edward Ozzie

Charles W Kaufman

Michael R O'Brien

Eric M Patey

Douglas Walter Conmy

Douglas M Conmy

Robert Sean Slapikoff

Elizabeth A Lorenson

A system for scheduling time intervals for a plurality of users comprises a database associated with one or more server means for storing a profile for each potential invitee of the system. Each invitee profile comprises user profiles that have information regarding available and unavailable times for that user and the electronic mail address for the user and resource profiles having information about the available times for a particular resource such as a room or equipment. A request generator connected over a network to the one or more server generates a request for allocation of a time interval for one or more of the plurality of invitees. The system then provides a busy time determination device that gathers the profiles for the plurality of invitees that were requested by the request generating means and that are available in the databases and determines whether those invitees are available during the time interval requested by the request generating means. For all available invitees, the electronic mail address in the profile is used to send each available requested invitee an invitation to attend at the requested time interval.

Electronic calendar with group scheduling and storage of user and resource profiles

When electronic mail is to be sent by an off-line user to a recipient who holds a digital certificate, the sender's mail program allows the sender to compose the mail, but the mail is placed in plain text in the sender's local outbox and flagged for subsequent encryption. When the sender later connects to a mail server to send the outgoing mail, the sender's mail software, in response to the flagged mail will request the recipient's certificate from the server and use the received certificate to encrypt the mail message before it leaves the sender's workstation. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, after using a digital certificate to encrypt a mail message, the certificate is discarded. In accordance with another embodiment, if the certificate is not available or located by the mail server, a message is sent to the sender informing him that the certificate cannot be located and the mail cannot be sent in encrypted form. At that point, the sender has an option to resend the mail in unencrypted form.

Method and apparatus for encrypting electronic messages composed using abbreviated address books

In a distributed computing system in which replicas of a document are separately stored and revised, the document containing data arranged in a number of fields, a method for replicating data contained in a revised document replica to the other of the replicas by replicating only the field or fields which have been revised since an earlier replication. The method includes the steps of dynamically maintaining a two byte document sequence number for each of the document replicas representing the number of revisions made to the replicas, and dynamically maintaining a one byte field sequence number for each of the fields in the replicas. The field sequence numbers for revised fields are set equal to the lower byte of the current document sequence number. When a replication is desired, the method involves determining which of the document replicas is more recently revised, determining which of the fields in the more recently revised replica are more recently revised than the corresponding fields in the other replica based on some or all of the field and document sequence numbers, and replicating only the data contained in each more recently revised fields to the corresponding fields in the other replica. The system can handle document sequence numbers greater than 256, in which field sequence numbers can no longer be accurately represented by one byte, by artificially incrementing field sequence numbers for unrevised fields and interpreting all field sequence numbers as having a value within 256 of the document sequence number.

Field level replication method

A system for scheduling time intervals for a plurality of users comprises a database, associated with one or more server means, for storing a profile for potential invitees of the system, the invitee profiles comprising user profiles wherein each user profile comprises information regarding available and unavailable times for that user. A remote workstation comprises a request generating system that is connected over a network to the server means and that generates a request for allocation of a time interval for one or more of the plurality of invitees. At the server, a busy time determination system gathers the profiles for the one or more requested invitees using asynchronous fan out requests to the one or more databases storing the profiles and determines whether those invitees are available during the requested time interval.

Electronic calendar with group scheduling and asynchronous fan out method

Method of replicating data at a field level

In order to establish a protected channel between a user and a software program running on a computer system, a graphic display unique to the user is displayed along with the normal information entry graphics. A foreign program which might duplicate the overall appearance of the entry graphics cannot display the unique visual display which would appear on the legitimate entry screen of a particular user. Thus, a user looking at his entry screen can tell by the visual display whether the entry screen has been generated by a legitimate program or by a foreign impostor program. Further, since it might be possible for an unauthorized person to surreptitiously observe the unique display pattern on the entry screen of an authorized user, to increase security, a program constructed according to the principles of the invention, changes the visual display as information is entered based on the partially entered information. Thus, even if an unauthorized person should oversee the entry of the information by an authorized user, memorize the display and incorporate the display in an impostor program, the impostor program would be unable to duplicate the sequence of visual displays which occurs during the entry of the information because the information itself is unknown.

Growing community of inventors

Nashua, NH, United States of America

Steven Robert Beckhardt