(No wireframe yet)

The point here is that many enquiries have some kind of constraint on dates and/or times. These can come in different forms — see commentary below.

I decide on, or change, the time constraints of the enquiry; these may also be seen positively as windows of opportunity.

• Forming enquiry

• Submit changes → Forming enquiry
• link to leave unchanged → Forming enquiry

• comes from enquiry-info
• Explanation of how time constraints or opportunity windows work

• basic enquiry information
  • EnqName
  • EnqNote
• Time zone in which constraints/windows are given
• EnqTimes

• EnqTimes

Some attention is needed to not overloading any one page with the several different aspects of these constraints / windows.

Need to look at how calendaring systems currently store times and dates, to see if there is any value in borrowing from existing standards.

It could be useful to have “weekday” and “weekend” options — there are many even more complex possibilities, but probably the value of these would not be worth the extra complexity.

The explanation may go something like this:

All enquiry types may or may not have time constraints. Just to spell out a few examples:

• my living enquiry may only apply from when my current rental contract expires
• sharing a game of tennis may only work for me on Thursday afternoons
• I may only want employment for 10 hours per week, at weekends
• I want someone helping me with child care on Wednesdays for 3 hours for the next three months
• I would like to be joining a choir that meets during school term times, either any time at weekends, or some weekday evenings but not Wednesdays or Fridays.

So there are several different windows of opportunity that can be set, and these can work either singly or in combination:

1. date range: from a date, until a date, or both – and perhaps more than one of these
2. time proportion: most obviously and commonly, number of hours per week, either expressed directly as hours, or proportion of FTE — full time equivalent, often taken as around 40 hours per week — this could be completely flexible, or within the weekly pattern opportunity windows given next
3. daily or weekly pattern: this could potentially be done on an hour-by-hour basis for the 24 hours in each day or 168 hours in each week; the window could mean all of the specified hours, any of them, or it could be hours available, with the number per week given by time proportion