Doo-da-loo - time management

I've been checking out the Doodle tool for coordination of meetings. I must say that I'm fairly impressed... to a point.

I've tried a few of these web-based schedulers in the past, mainly Meet-o-matic. Now I'm far from a fan of Meet-o-matic - it just seems too clunky, too limited. Even the registered version doesn't have enough features, often requiring a long stream of text in the comments section to add nuance to the various "shades" of availability you might be trying to describe.

Doodle seems a lot better, and I can see myself using it at home and work, especially for national (non-University) meetings where the Outlook scheduler is not an option.

I've always felt that ultimately, the best meeting coordination method is full access to every participant's diary, along with a dose of common sense. However not surprisingly not everyone would be comfortable with this!

As part of my job I arrange a fair few meetings on behalf of other people, sometimes involving a large number of people. As it is often impossible to find a date that everyone can attend, it is sometimes necessary to make a decision regarding the best date for the meeting, and this might not necessarily be the date when the majority can attend. In this respect one of the potential drawbacks with using Doodle is also one of its strengths - its transparency.


For the majority of meetings the fact that all participants would normally see everyone's recorded availability would be advantageous in finding a time that suited everyone. However if some participants were to appear, shall I say, less "critical" than others then I can foresee a situation where individuals might begin to feel "slighted" at the final decision on dates...

That said, with a bit of exploration I've managed to find how to enable the options to conduct a "hidden" poll, as well as the extremely useful chance to state "if absolutely necessary" (this blog post has been retrospectively edited as a result!)


Personally I wouldn't be so comfortable either with the prospect of allowing automatic submission of my possible availability by scheduling tools, at least not without the final decision on suggested dates being my own. We can all fall prey to bad practice when it comes to the upkeep of diaries, either blocking out too much time in an attempt to protect some own-time, or failing to quite record every minute that might be required of an appointment...

Enough rambling, I'd better do "some things".

Thing 7 (use Doodle to schedule a meeting with a fellow 23 Things participant): Well, I did some "fantasy scheduling" with various figments of my imagination - does that count?

Thing 8 (add Doodle to your iGoogle page): Erm... I've added the Widget to my homepage. Can't for the life of me get my log-in to work though!