Multi-agent based decision mechanism for distributed meeting scheduling system

In existing meeting scheduling systems, finding a common free time slot of all (prospective) participants is the goal. When such a free time slot is not found, the host has to ask the busy participants to change their schedules. Changing a schedule is a complex process requiring a lot of negotiations and, there is no guarantee that the goal will be achieved. In the worst case, the host has to ignore the time slot (which was probably the first choice) and try to schedule the meeting in another time slot (probably a lesser choice). The process will continue till the scheduling succeeds. We argue that it is not always necessary for all the participants to attend a meeting. There are some participants whose presence is mandatory for the meeting. The presence of other participants are non-mandatory. The meeting can proceed in the absence of some of the non-mandatory participants. This allows greater flexibility and more efficient scheduling. This paper introduces the concept of a Quorum in the meeting scheduling process and proposes a two-round negotiating protocol to find the time-slot which meets the quorum requirements. To establish the robustness of our scheduler, we simulated scheduling in our lab, and showed its flexibility in scheduling a meeting.