Reasoning about Time Constraints in a Mixed-Initiative Calendar Manager

Scheduling support is very important for calendar management in order to automatize the execution of possibly complex reasoning tasks. However, an interactive approach is desirable to enable the user to steer the allocation of events, which is a rather personal and critical kind of activity. This paper proposes a mixed-initiative scheduling model supporting the user’s awareness during the exploration of the solution space. The paper describes the temporal reasoning techniques underlying MARA (Mixed-initiAtive calendaR mAnager), focusing on the generation of scheduling options and on the characterization of their properties, needed to present the pros and cons of each possible solution to the user.