Is there an auto-scheduling app?

January 25, 2006 12:14 PM

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.

posted by mecran01 to Technology (28 answers total)

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.
posted by poppo at 12:20 PM on January 25, 2006

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?
posted by archimago at 12:20 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by craniac at 12:22 PM on January 25, 2006

mecran01 = craniac ?
posted by poppo at 12:24 PM on January 25, 2006

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
posted by poppo at 12:29 PM on January 25, 2006

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?
posted by wzcx at 12:30 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by craniac at 12:35 PM on January 25, 2006

What about evite? It's not really geared toward business-related meetings, but it should serve the purpose for RSVPing and whatnot...
posted by twiggy at 12:36 PM on January 25, 2006

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?
posted by cgg at 12:38 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by alms at 12:38 PM on January 25, 2006

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.

Yes!!! That's exactly what I was thinking of!!!!
posted by craniac at 12:41 PM on January 25, 2006

Check this out, the Automatically Updated Schedule Matrix Template
posted by jacobsee at 12:46 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by dudeman at 12:46 PM on January 25, 2006

Would something like Planzo (which has a customizable API) suit your needs?
posted by ceri richard at 12:49 PM on January 25, 2006

Best answer: haven't used it, but perhaps pointment?
posted by lbergstr at 12:49 PM on January 25, 2006

thanks dudeman, I knew I had seen an explanation of that somewhere!
posted by jacobsee at 12:49 PM on January 25, 2006

Here's a previous AskMe thread on this same topic.
posted by ewagoner at 12:54 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by weston at 1:15 PM on January 25, 2006

Response by poster: 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.
posted by mecran01 at 1:18 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by cacophony at 1:18 PM on January 25, 2006

Best answer: For a little more flexibility than Pointment, try When2meet.com.
posted by MrZero at 1:32 PM on January 25, 2006

http://www.meetomatic.com
posted by krisjohn at 3:38 PM on January 25, 2006

Aaah, Web2.0. Solving every problem four times over.
posted by blag at 5:45 PM on January 25, 2006

Response by poster: Meetomatic makes a little bit of drool come out of the corner of my mouth. IT IS SEXY!!!!
posted by mecran01 at 7:53 PM on January 25, 2006

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.
posted by booizzy at 8:25 PM on January 25, 2006

43Folders has a great tip. I haven't tried it, but it seems alright in theory.
posted by mr.dan at 11:27 PM on January 25, 2006

http://www.meetwithapproval.com/
posted by mrkohrea at 1:04 AM on January 26, 2006

Goovite Meeting Maker: http://www.goovite.com/mm
posted by mark7570 at 1:17 PM on February 10, 2006