We all know how painful it can be sometimes to try and schedule things with other folks via email - especially those outside your office and/or company for work-related things like meetings, conference calls, lunches, etc. If your experience is anything like mine, it take at least 3-4 back and forth emails to settle on a date and time that works -- and that's just when trying to schedule something with just one other person that's in the same vicinity or time zone. Multiply that by 2 for every additional person involved in the process and you get the picture.
I recently came across a company by the name of TimeBridge that offers a consumer-friendly (and more importantly, free!) meeting schedule product that is entirely web-based and allows you to not only integrate it with office-based calendars like Outlook but, more importantly, with home-based calendars like Google or iCal. There's also a business version, which I assume has some kind of price tag associated with it.
The process is pretty simple -- sign up for an account, create a meeting proposal - which includes selecting/suggesting days and times for the event, send it out to your intended recipients and wait for them to get back to you. Once everyone is on board the invite can be integrated into your calendaring system of choice (assuming it's one of the three mentioned above) and you're all set.
Feel free to send any and all feedback about the product once you've given it a try - I think you'll find it worthwhile.
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Chris, I love the TAP concept. I'm helping a new startup in that space. My first litmus test for TAP products is my LittleSister test - if I can explain it to her and have her want to use it, then forget it.
ReplyDeleteNow on Timebridge. I'm a power user and love it. I really like the integration to webex and conf calling. I've also played around with Tungle which I like as well, but I think TimeBridge offers a better user experience. One feature I'd love to see offered is auto dial for conference calls (e.g. I get a call to initiate the conference call) since I spend a lot of time in my car. Bottom line, I love these services because they solve such an annoying problem in an simple way.
I look forward to more of your TAP posts.