Calendar.Help: Designing a Workflow-Based Scheduling Agent with Humans in the Loop

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

12 Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2017 Last revised: 6 Apr 2017

See all articles by Justin Cranshaw

Justin Cranshaw

Carnegie Mellon University

Emad Elwany

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond

Todd Newman

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond

Rafal Kocielnik

University of Washington

Bowen Yu

University of Minnesota

Sandeep Soni

Georgia Institute of Technology

Jaime Teevan

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond

Andres Monroy-Hernandez

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond; University of Washington

Date Written: March 24, 2017

Abstract

Although information workers may complain about meetings, they are an essential part of their work life. Consequently, busy people spend a significant amount of time scheduling meetings. We present Calendar.help, a system that provides fast, efficient scheduling through structured workflows. Users interact with the system via email, delegating their scheduling needs to the system as if it were a human personal assistant. Common scheduling scenarios are broken down using well-defined workflows and completed as a series of microtasks that are automated when possible and executed by a human otherwise. Unusual scenarios fall back to a trained human assistant who executes them as unstructured macrotasks. We describe the iterative approach we used to develop Calendar.help, and share the lessons learned from scheduling thousands of meetings during a year of real-world deployments. Our findings provide insight into how complex information tasks can be broken down into repeatable components that can be executed efficiently to improve productivity.

Keywords: Scheduling; microtask; macrotask; crowdsourcing; conversational agent; assistant

Suggested Citation

Cranshaw, Justin and Elwany, Emad and Newman, Todd and Kocielnik, Rafal and Yu, Bowen and Soni, Sandeep and Teevan, Jaime and Monroy-Hernandez, Andres, Calendar.Help: Designing a Workflow-Based Scheduling Agent with Humans in the Loop (March 24, 2017). Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2940295 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2940295

Justin Cranshaw (Contact Author)

Carnegie Mellon University ( email )

Emad Elwany

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond ( email )

Building 99
Redmond, WA
United States

Todd Newman

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond ( email )

Building 99
Redmond, WA
United States

Rafal Kocielnik

University of Washington ( email )

Seattle, WA 98195
United States

Bowen Yu

University of Minnesota ( email )

110 Wulling Hall, 86 Pleasant St, S.E.
308 Harvard Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

Sandeep Soni

Georgia Institute of Technology ( email )

Atlanta, GA 30332
United States

Jaime Teevan

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond ( email )

Building 99
Redmond, WA
United States

Andres Monroy-Hernandez

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research - Redmond ( email )

Building 99
Redmond, WA
United States

University of Washington ( email )

Seattle, WA 98195
United States

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