Calendly

Find a Time in Google Calendar

If you’re a Google Workspace for Education person, then you are probably already familiar with Find a Time in the Calendar. You create an event in the calendar and add some guests. Then you can check out the Find a Time tab to see when everyone is available. It’s quick and painless. The only problem with this is that you must have access to your attendees’ calendars, which may not always be true.

Doodle Poll

Doodle Poll is a great, free way to find when different people can meet. You create the poll (quick and easy process) and then it gets emailed out automatically to the participants. They reply via the poll when they are available. You can create Doodle polls for more than just meetings and scheduling; you can also use them for surveys, questionnaires, or to book appointments. No registration is required. But if you create a free account, then you can synch your calendar up to Doodle for the future. There is also a paid, premium version that offers a few more features.

YouCanBook.me

Another great way to schedule meetings and happenings is with YouCanBook.me. This works great when you want to schedule individual appointments, like helping teachers with tech integration. You set up times when you are available and then share that with your participants. They can select a time that fits with their schedule quickly and easily. To get all the features, you would pay $10/month. But they also have a “forever free” plan, which gets you a powerful booking page with all the basic features. All they ask in return is that your booking page and notification emails will carry their “Powered for free” button.

Time Scheduling with Calendly

Calendly is another great program for individuals to use to sign up for time with you. The free version includes an unlimited number of 1:1 meetings, automatic email notifications for participants, and integrations with calendar and conferencing apps like Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. The premium version ($8/month) offers the ability to schedule meetings with multiple participants and some other features. I found Calendly to be a little harder to use than YouCanBook.me, but still a very nice solution.

A Slightly Different Take on Time Scheduling

If you wanted to completely overhaul the use of electronic calendars, you might end up with Calendar. Calendar uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you manage your valuable time and provides a ton of great features, including analytics. You can also set up individual appointments or group meetings. The interface is gorgeous and it has both an Android and iOS app. The free version only allows you to share with five other people; the Pro version offers many more features and users and is $8/month.

As you can see, all of these different tools can save you time and help to get more people to attend your meet-ups and meetings. Which one is your favorite?

Are you an instructional coach that needs to set up a coaching cycle in advance or an administrator who needs a quick way to schedule meetings with several people at once? Finding the right time slot can be like looking for a needle in a haystack and it can be a hassle trying to match people’s calendars. In this blog entry, we’ll revisit the importance of scheduling and tools to make it easier.

Setting Up Your Own Schedule

Time is the one resource you can’t replenish. Use it or lose it forever. One way to safeguard your time is to use a calendar program such as Google Calendars or Microsoft Outlook. These powerful tools make setup and maintenance of a calendar a breeze. One of my favorite views for calendars is the schedule view. It converts your list of events into a To Do list, a task list to work through. Here are some ways you can make scheduling easier:

Suggestion #1: Convert your calendar list to a task list.

Each week, I take a quick look at my calendar and make a list of the events in a note-taking tool. Google Tasks and Keep provide some nice features, as does Microsoft To-Do. This makes it easy to keep track of calendar-based tasks. Add sub-tasks to your main event task and then check it off. The inclusion of checkboxes in all three web and smartphone app versions makes this a cinch.

Suggestion #2: Organize tasks in sequential order of priority.

While you are converting your events into tasks, why not organize them in order of priority? Your calendar program will remind you of the appropriate sequence of events. If you need to get ready for a meeting, it’s better to start with the most important item. Sequencing them early in the day can remind you of what’s coming up later.

Suggestion #3: Collaborate on a meeting scheduling.

Meeting events involve others. How do you wrangle schedules to get to the one time slot that works for all? You collaborate on the task of scheduling.

Collaborate on Scheduling Tasks

Wondering how you can shuffle off the work of scheduling a high priority meeting to others? Use technology tools that make this job easier.

meeting scheduling

Here are a few oldies but goodies to get you started, listed in alphabetic order:

Calendar: Sign up with your Google login or email. Like the other apps in this list, Calendar makes it easy to schedule meetings with others. Basic use is free. It offers extra features like analytics and meeting transcription for $10 a month.
Calendly: Schedule meetings without the back-and-forth of email. You tell calendly your desired times, then share the Calendly link via email. People pick a time and it gets added to your calendar. This costs money, depending on your needs.
Doodle: This premier meeting scheduler is web-based and creates a poll for recipients. Invitees receive the poll, then select their best meeting time. This one costs money also, depending on your needs. Pricing is free to $69 annual cost.
HubSpot: A free tool, you can use this to schedule appointments. It integrates with Google Calendar and Office 365.
Pick: While it lacks a free option, the cost is only $3 per month. It’s incredibly easy to use and works on the web and your smartphone.
You Can Book Me: A tool I’ve recommended to instructional coaches for empowering teachers to book them, this includes a free option. You can also pay $10 a month for this web-based scheduling tool.

There are many more meeting schedulers. Here’s a new one you may not have heard of yet.

Meeting Scheduler Spotlight: Xoyondo

A newcomer to scheduling tasks is Xoyondo. It’s free, does not need registration, and is drop-dead easy. Some of its free features include:

Easy scheduling of meetings, polls, and message boards
Dashboard view of all polls
Unlimited polls and participants
A public personal page with a web address (URL) of your choice

You can see a complete list of attributes online, along with pricing for even more features.

Ready to get started on that next important meeting? Don’t be the face that launched a thousand emails! Instead, use one of the meeting schedulers mentioned in this blog to save time and effort.

Time Scheduling Tools