Web Reviews

Schedule Meetings Without Pain

Indianapolis, IN - July 5, 2010

“Perhaps the second most frustrating aspect of email is when you’re trying to schedule a meeting with someone, especially multiple someones...”

– Jim Cota

Email is a great communication tool. But sometimes, it simply falls flat on its face. It doesn’t convey emotion very well without riddling your messages with little smiley faces to connote a joke, or sarcasm, or to temper the feeling that may be inherent in your words. (As a side note, I feel compelled to tell you that if you’re considering using sarcasm in email, don’t. Sarcasm and email don’t mix, they aren’t friends, and nothing good can come from putting them together.)

Perhaps the second most frustrating aspect of email is when you’re trying to schedule a meeting with someone, especially multiple someones. It starts innocently enough: a quick missive that you’re available to meet next week, maybe between 1 and 4 on Monday or anytime on Wednesday. Next thing you know, three weeks and 57 emails have been traded and you’re still no closer to getting a date set. In many cases, the phone is the best bet for meeting scheduling, but that ignores one of the main benefits of email: the ability to answer when you want.

As you might imagine, there are a couple of really good tools for solving this problem. I’ve used several over the years, and two have become the standard bearers: TimeBridge and Tungle. Each of them approach the problem a little differently, so you might find you prefer one of the other. Here are the basics.

With TimeBridge, you create an account, create a new meeting, designate five days and times that you’re available, and send the message out to everyone you’d like to attend. Friends, co-workers, prospects, clients… each of them will receive the invitation via email with “Reply Now” button included. The button returns them to the TimeBridge site where they can see all of the proposed days and times, including the responses that have come in from others that have been invited. So each person will pick all of the times that work for them, designate which are the “Best” and which don’t work at all, and TimeBridge compiles all of the results. Using the responses, TimeBridge selects the best time for everyone and sends out the final meeting confirmation.

Overall, the web site is simple to use and presents all of the options clearly and concisely, so everyone– even those using it for the first time– will easily understand how it works and what they’re supposed to do. It also doesn’t require that attendees create an account, only meeting organizers, which is nice for those who may only be using it occasionally. Of course, once you’ve replied to a meeting, you have the option of creating an account so you’ll be able to organize your own in the future.

Since I first started using TimeBridge, they’ve added some features to round out the product offering. With one of the free accounts, you can sync the events with your calendar; share your availability with others in advance to streamline scheduling; create a public “MeetWithMe” page create a meeting room with an agenda, action items, and notes to keep things moving; and integrate with other third-party apps like Google Maps and Evernote. The paid version ($14/month) offers live technical support, text messaging meeting reminders, and unlimited phone and web conferencing.

TimeBridge’s MeetWithMe pages allow you to make your schedule public, so people trying to schedule something with you can see your availability ahead of time. This can be a handy way to streamline the process, but since it’s based on your availability as determined by items on your calendar, you might find you’re getting asked for meetings at times you’d rather not.

Another scheduling service, Tungle, also allows you to schedule events similar to the way TimeBridge does, but it handles these public calendars slightly differently. In addition to syncing your calendar to display when you’re available, Tungle also allows you to block out specific chunks of time to keep your schedule open. For example, in addition to your other meetings, you might want to keep Monday mornings free. Tungle allows you to block out this time without having it on your calendar. (Tungle also shows times that you’re available, whereas TimeBridge shows the times you’re busy… not a big distinction, but you might find one more agreeable than the other.) To see how this works, you can see my calendar on both services: Tungle and TimeBridge.

Both of these work pretty well, but at this point I find myself leaning toward TimeBridge. There are others, of course, and you might find one of these more to your liking, so check out Doodle, and ScheduleOnce and let me know what you think.