Scheduling solutions?

[Hendrik Bluhm]

Hi,

I like the idea of having a request based time allocation system which
takes into account how much time people had on the machine recently,
but implementing this via a human agent who sits in front of coral seems
inefficient, unflexible and probably also unreliable. However, it
should be possible to automate this by hosting a web interface on the
snf homepage.

The procedure could roughly look like this:

people request time some 10 days in advance, specifying
preferred/impossible time of the day/week, minimum length etc.

8 days ahead, those requests are assigned a priority based on
recent machine use (to be obtained from the coral database, reflecting
actual use) and granted according to the priority score.
People could then have 2 days to transfer the allocated slots onto coral,
which would require that everyone agrees not to make reservations
during this time.
Less than 5 days in advance, any free spot on coral would be available.
Of course, the whole system can be refined and supplemented by additional
rules regarding cancellation etc, e.g. canceling less than 24 hrs
in advance counts as actual beam time when calculating priorities.

Implementing this would of course require some cooperation with the
SNF admins, but should not be to hard. I would be willing to work on the
scheduling algorithm, but would greatly appreciate an help regarding how
to set up a web interface.

The same system could in principle be used for other equipment
(innotec, stsetch?, etc.), and if it turns out to be very useful, it could
be incorporated directly in coral one day. (Not by us, though)

Hendrik


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Hendrik Bluhm
Department of Physics
Stanford University

Work adress:                    Moler Lab
           			Lab. for Advanced Materials
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