Linked Meeting Invitations (16-Sep-2009)

Linked Meeting Invitations

Sometimes it is necessary to send out a meeting invitation to others based on one a user has received from someone else. In other words, an additional group of people is invited to the same meeting, but are not invitees on the original meeting invitation. This can occur, for example, when a team leader is invited to an event and wishes to extend the invitation to the entire team. The invitation would not come from the originator, but rather the team leader. The team leader would like to keep track of who is coming to the meeting and possibly add more details to the invitation. It is annoying when the first invitation is updated by the originator, e.g. with a new call-in number thus requiring the secondary invitation to be updated so invitees get notified of the new call-in number. Similarly, if the meeting is rescheduled, it is necessary for the team leader to send reschedule notices to the second group of attendees.

Currently there is no way to link meeting invitations such that changes to one meeting invitation are coordinated with changes to a second invitation. This disclosure deals with coordinating and linking meeting invitations. The idea is to have specific fields of the original invitation linked to the same fields in secondary invitations such that if the original invitation is modified, any secondary invitations would automatically be updated.

Here is an example implementation:

User A is a second line manager and sends out an invitation to User B and others. User B is a first line manager and wants to then send out this invitation to the user's employees. The user does not want the invitations to come directly...