Just what the doctor ordered !
I regularly need to set a date for a meeting, in many cases with +10 attendees. What is the best way to do this?
I’m not even considering scheduling the meeting through Outlook (decline – propose new date – decline – propose new date – …). And what if not everybody has Outlook at their disposal…
What I found to be the best solution so far, was to write a simple e-mail message, with potential dates vertically, and attendee names horizontally, where they simply had to edit the days they were absolutely not available. I then selected the closest date on which everybody could attend.
Needless to say, this is a bit messy. And it requires close follow-up on my part. With the added bonus that sometimes people just don’t get this system, causing even more tedious, useless work.
Well, NO MORE !!!88!!!8
Via Lifehacker [ lifehacker.com ], I came across these two (free) web applications: Doodle and When is Good (I totally dig the name of the latter).
The big strength of these solutions is the simplicity and the openness. You don’t need to register (not even the organizer of the meeting), and you can specify certain timeframes per day. They both even have the ability to take timezones into account (super handy for conference calls).
My vote goes to Doodle, because it is more versatile (aside from OK/NOT OK also a “OK if no other way possible”), and you can use it for polls as well (e.g. what business incentive do the colleagues prefer?)
Doodle [ doodle.ch ]
When is Good [ whenisgood.net ]
Tags: timemanagement, meeting scheduling, meeting date, doodle, when is good
Room of a pleinolijf 