I want to mention that in the following I based my ideas on the following hypothesis for Habanero sessions:

Habanero sessions are always happening in real-time. Now there are two kinds of participants:

The Habanero environment is currently displaying synchronous information via different sub-panels, that the user can open/close when he needs it. This information is pretty static. I think the monitoring, or feedback of a session for a synchronous participant should be the session controller that Bin developed using the Replay Editor GUI. And the sub-panel should shows the same data for either synchronous or asynchronous participants; information such as now but with the asynchronous dimension added.

The Habanero environment contains 3 different GUI entities: the sessions, the participants and the tools. I am going to discuss each entity in order to integrate their asynchronous dimensions.

This notion that enables a participant to store sessions definitions in order to create or join them easily should stay intact.

Sessions:

As mentioned earlier, a session is always synchronous, but the participation status of the user in each session can be synchronous or asynchronous. So the session's list should reflect these 2 categories. In fact, the session list can be either decomposed into 2 lists according to the participation status of the user (such as what I did in the Habanero beta3 GUI). Another solution will be to present in the sessions list, the participation status of the user by using a GUI trick (a icon showing the synchronous/asynchronous status, different colors for the name of the session that could also map the border of the main panel, etc…)

Here, we need to add news functions:

• Create a session as a synchronous user
• Create a session as a asynchronous user
• Join a session as a synchronous user. In this case, the user should have the choice to replay the session from a specific date or just enter the session via a state dump (current join)
• Join a session as a asynchronous user
• Change my participation status as asynchronous user
• Change my participation status as synchronous user. In this case, the user should have the choice to replay the session from a specific date or just enter the session via a state dump (current join)
• Import, Branch, Merge a session: no GUI ideas for these functions.

The list of Participants should show the participation status of each one. The GUI solution for the participant panel could be:

• 2 separated areas to show both synchronous and asynchronous participants
• using different colors to display the name of the participants according to their status
• the presence flag could be extended or modified to show asynchronous status

Here, we need to add new functions:

• Through "myself" participant icon, the user should be able to change his/her own status.
• Change my participation status as asynchronous user
• Change my participation status as synchronous user. In this case, the user should have the choice to replay the session from a specific date or just enter the session via a state dump (current join)
• For the other participant icons, we should be able to notify them in real-time. We can already send them emails.

Remark: on the Notification list used to invite users in an starting Habanero session. This panel and function should be rethought to integrate Mary's notification system + POS, and also LDAP directory names instead of the file format I am using now.

The Tools list shows all the tool currently opened in the session. We should add a GUI feedback to show the kind of filtering the asynchronous user has chosen.

Here, we need new functions:

• To modify the filtering of each tools directly from this list

The Tools palette should be the one to access the filtering options for each tool. Because, the tools palette present all the possible tools that could be opened in a session. This solution means that the environment needs to change slightly to handle one tools palette per session instead of only palette for all the session (it is the way it is written currently).

The filtering option for each tool should be described in the properties file associated for each tool. And the GUI should show the option. We might want to reuse the help message line, I associated with any FB panels.