Planning meetings made easy
When collaborating with several people, everyone has their own calendar with appointments, which makes it difficult to organise a meeting. Are there Web-based tools that can assist you?
What’s out there?
Gmail (http://www.gmail.com) recently added an Invitation function to new e-mails. This makes it a lot easier to arrange an appointment. However, planning a fully-fledged meeting with several people requires dedicated tools. Doodle (http://doodle.ch) and When is Good (http://whenisgood.net) are simple but highly efficient services. But there are various other Web-based tools offering more options.
Tungle
Tungle (http://www.tungle.com) was recently given a facelift. It now gives you your own URL (http://tungle.me/yourname). On the webpage associated with this address, you can indicate your availability on a weekly calendar. You can then synchronise this with the calendars and the address books of MS Outlook (2003 to 2010), Google Calendar/Gmail, Apple iCal/Entourage or Lotus Notes. This requires you to install a plug-in first. Note. The entire operation took a couple of minutes to complete during our test.
The next step is to schedule your meeting. This can be done either from within the online module, or directly in, for instance, Outlook via the new menu bar at the right. Select potential dates and enter the people you wish to invite. Note. In our test the AutoComplete function didn’t work, so we had to type the full e-mail addresses. After clicking on the button, the guests will receive an invitation by e-mail. They can click through to a webpage where they can specify the dates that suit them. Tungle will then find a moment when everyone’s free: you’ll all receive an e-mail and your Outlook calendar will be blocked automatically for the meeting.
TimeBridge
TimeBridge (http://www.timebridge.com) is a similar service which also allows synchronisation with Outlook, Google or iCal. Scheduling a new meeting is done by typing or importing the e-mail addresses of the guests and selecting up to five free moments on the calendar page. The rest of the operation is comparable with Tungle. Here, you can also have your calendar blocked automatically for the definitive meeting.
When you’re not interested in extras such as phone and video conferencing or live technical support, you can use TimeBridge free of charge. But you will be regularly invited to try out the paid Plus version. Note. We also visited Meetwith.me (http://meetwith.me), but this appeared to be the same TimeBridge module.
Where?
Let’s assume that these tools have enabled you to fix the best date for your meeting. But how about the venue? If finding the right venue proves difficult, call in the help of Mezzoman (http://www.mezzoman.com). Under the motto “Meet in the Middle”, this website tries to find the best venue for your meeting. This is how it works: enter up to three addresses (for instance your own address, that of your business partner and your customer), and Mezzoman will find a venue which is somewhere in the middle, using Google Maps for this purpose.
Tip. When you enter something like “Italian food”, “Chinese food” or “vegetarian food” in the search field, a number of suitable restaurants for your business lunch will be suggested as well.
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