Comments on: Is there an auto-scheduling app?

Question: Is there an auto-scheduling app?

mecran01 — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:14:19 -0800

I'm scheduling a meeting with 17 different people via email. It's a recurring nightmare.

Is there any sort of free web app to help with this, or a methodology that doesn't involve 300 emails being sent back and forth? Or is it, as I suspect, one of those unsolvable problems that is exponentially more difficult than it seems, the equivalent of a flying car.

By: poppo

poppo — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:20:24 -0800

It's definitely solved, just don't know about free. MS Exchange is great for this. You can see everyone else's schedule, send out meeting invites, accept them, reject them. It's great. Just not free.

By: archimago

archimago — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:20:44 -0800

Do you have Outlook? You can send an invitation to all for a pre-determined meeting time and the recipients either accept or deny the invitation.

Are you asking something different?

By: craniac

craniac — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:22:55 -0800

No Outlook.

I was hoping for a web app where respondents could click on the meeting time that works best. Maybe I'll use survey monkey. These are not technologically astute people, and they are scattered across multiple email domains.

By: poppo

poppo — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:24:49 -0800

mecran01 = craniac ?

By: poppo

poppo — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:29:16 -0800

Hopefully someone else will answer with something better, but technically you could still use Exchange without them even having Outlook. It's reachable via a webmail interface.

But anyway, it sounds like overkill for you

By: wzcx

wzcx — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:30:34 -0800

how about a big table in a wiki that replicates a spreadsheet? Everyone fills in ALL the times they might be available, and you just look at it afterwards and pick a time that works?

By: craniac

craniac — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:35:28 -0800

mecran01 = craniac ?

Sock puppet. I blew my weekly question with a duplicate post that I had removed and lost my golden ticket in the process.

By: twiggy

twiggy — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:36:24 -0800

What about evite? It's not really geared toward business-related meetings, but it should serve the purpose for RSVPing and whatnot...

By: cgg

cgg — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:38:18 -0800

Or, just send out one email yourself, and get one response from each of the 17 people. On each line, put a time slot (i.e Monday, 9am). To respond, each individual just marks the lines that they're not available for. When you get all 17 reponses, just pick the time slot that has the least number of people saying they're unavailable. Email the result back, and you're done.

Am I missing a complexity here?

By: alms

alms — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:38:56 -0800

I saw a simple web app that did this once, and have wanted to duplicate it ever since. It would be very easy to build.

One person posts the potential times and the invitees. Everyone else then goes in and checks off which times they can/cannot attend. For bonus points, you let people view the page in their own time zone.

Unfortunately, I can't point you to an implementation.

By: craniac

craniac — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:41:11 -0800

By: jacobsee

jacobsee — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:46:16 -0800

Check this out, the Automatically Updated Schedule Matrix Template

By: dudeman

dudeman — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:46:51 -0800

I haven't tried this low tech solution but it looks reasonable:

You simply email around a text calendar (serially) everyone fills in some symbols representing their availability, and you can see which dates are optimal for scheduling at a glance.

Virtues are simplicity and minimal requirements (plaintext email)

Check out the comments and pointers to simplified variants.

By: ceri richard

ceri richard — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:49:01 -0800

Would something like Planzo (which has a customizable API) suit your needs?

By: lbergstr

lbergstr — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:49:04 -0800

haven't used it, but perhaps pointment?

By: jacobsee

jacobsee — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:49:45 -0800

thanks dudeman, I knew I had seen an explanation of that somewhere!

By: ewagoner

ewagoner — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:54:53 -0800

Here's a previous AskMe thread on this same topic.

By: weston

weston — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:15:16 -0800

You simply email around a text calendar (serially) everyone fills in some symbols representing their availability, and you can see which dates are optimal for scheduling at a glance.

Virtues are simplicity and minimal requirements (plaintext email)

In other words, approval voting, except instead of voting for candidates, you vote for meeting times.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:18:20 -0800

oooh, some cool ideas, especially Pointment (rhymes with ointment!) and the text-calendar thingy.

I ended up going to http://surveymonkey.com and creating a single question with 40 possible answers, in the format:

Friday--9am
Friday--10am
Friday--11am
Friday--12noon
Friday--1pm
Friday--2pm
Friday--3pm
Friday--4pm

only for each day of the week, with tick boxes next to each day, and instructions for respondents to click whichever hours they are free to meet. We'll see if it works.

By: cacophony

cacophony — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:18:48 -0800

You could give Meet With Approval a try. I haven't used it, so I can't give a recommendation, but some people seem to like it. It seems to be designed to address your exact problem.

By: MrZero

MrZero — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:32:53 -0800

For a little more flexibility than Pointment, try When2meet.com.

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:38:42 -0800

http://www.meetomatic.com

By: blag

blag — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:45:07 -0800

Aaah, Web2.0. Solving every problem four times over.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:53:06 -0800

Meetomatic makes a little bit of drool come out of the corner of my mouth. IT IS SEXY!!!!

By: booizzy

booizzy — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:25:17 -0800

I used Meet with Approval to schedule a monthly meeting that I have to organize each month when we'd gotten around to our 100th email. It worked really well. Only one person had trouble logging their times, but they were able to post a comment.

By: mr.dan

mr.dan — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:27:19 -0800

43Folders has a great tip. I haven't tried it, but it seems alright in theory.

By: mrkohrea

mrkohrea — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 01:04:37 -0800

http://www.meetwithapproval.com/

By: mark7570

mark7570 — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:17:33 -0800

Goovite Meeting Maker: http://www.goovite.com/mm