Don’t you hate trying to schedule a meeting by email? If you use Calendly, you already know how technology can solve this problem. Today, we’ll look at a new feature just released.
Yes, the dreaded scheduling meetings. Here’s the typical exchange between two colleagues…Jed and Ned:
Jed: “Let’s get together. How’s Monday at 10:00 for you?”
Ned: “Nope, can’t do that. How’s Tuesday at 2:00?”
Jed: “Sorry, can’t do that. How about Wednesday at 8:00 or 2:00?”
Ned: “Wow, neither of those are good…”
It’s like playing a game of “Battleship” by email. Each person is trying for a “hit” on a calendar he can’t see.
Finally, you unload the heavy artillery: “I’ve got Monday at 9:00, 10:30, and 2:00. Tuesday at 10:00 all the way through 2:00 is OK. Wednesday, I’m free from 8:00-10:00.” Three days later when the other person finally replies, the one-time slot he picked has already been gobbled-up by something else.
And so it goes…back & forth, back & forth. There are some great tools to put a stop to “Email Battleship” and allow you to take control of your calendar.
Here is a video that gives you the basic idea behind Calendly and other similar autoschedulers:
Today’s focus, however, is not about scheduling a one-on-one meeting. It’s about scheduling a meeting with multiple people and trying to find a time when everyone is free. For years, a service called Doodle has been the go-to service for this type of thing. Now, you can get it right inside Calendly. The video I created walks you through the steps.
Scheduling group meetings just got easier!
Note: Since this post and video were created, Calendly has added two additional features:
- When you’re ready to schedule the meeting from a poll, you can now add additional invitees who did not participate in the poll to the scheduled event during the booking flow.
- When setting up your poll, you can now select up to 40 slots to offer to your invitees to vote on in your poll.
The best thing to do is pull up your own Calendly account, go over to the video, and work through that video as you create a sample meeting. That way you learn by doing.
If you are brand new to the world of autoschedulers, create a free account at calendly.com. To help you, here is an excellent video done by Scott Friesen that walks you through getting started.
Stop playing email battleship and let automation handle your calendar.
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