BACKGROUND

Users of email and calendaring applications often share messages that they have received by forwarding those messages to a new recipient. Similarly, new attendees can be invited or assigned action items related to an existing calendar event by forwarding an invitation. As email systems have gained sophistication, one service offered to users is the ability to parse incoming messages to identify relevant event metadata within the message and automatically create events in the user's calendar based on those event metadata. When messages or calendar events are forwarded, these event metadata may have different relevancy for the new recipient/invitee than the sharing user, which causes difficulties in the automatic provision and parsing of the metadata.

SUMMARY

This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description section. This summary is not intended to identify all key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

Systems, methods, and computer readable storage devices embodying processor executable instructions for sharing events with structured metadata are provided herein. In one aspect, an email message is received from a source and is parsed to identify any event metadata it contains from which an event is automatically created for the original recipient. In another aspect, details from an existing event are selected for use as event metadata. The sharing user selects new recipients and roles for those new recipients via a user interface integrated into a mail and/or calendar application. Selected event metadata, and their relationship to the new recipients, are integrated into an email message, which is then shared to the new recipients. The new recipients are provided the event metadata—originally relevant to the sharing user—in a context relevant to the new recipients. In various aspects, receiving users configure whether calendar events are automatically created upon receipt or may be created in response to user acknowledgement/acceptance of the shared event metadata.

By sharing events with structured metadata as described in the present disclosure, increases in computational efficiency and reductions in bandwidth usage are realized, while an improved user experience (for both sharing and new receiving users) is provided. Users are thereby provided tools to efficiently and easily share events with one another that require less data to be transmitted between mail and calendar servers with greater fidelity to the event's meaning to the individual users.

Examples are implemented as a computer process, a computing system, or as an article of manufacture such as a device, computer program product, or computer readable medium. According to an aspect, the computer program product is a computer storage medium readable by a computer system and encoding a computer program comprising instructions for executing a computer process.

The details of one or more aspects are set forth in the accompanying drawings and description below. Other features and advantages will be apparent from a reading of the following detailed description and a review of the associated drawings. It is to be understood that the following detailed description is explanatory only and is not restrictive of the claims.

