Good meetings happen when people prepare for them. One way to eke out a little more time for that is to be more efficient with how you schedule your meetings. How you choose a time and date when everyone can meet and get it onto your calendar matters because it can be either a smooth and quick process or a time-consuming one, usually involving an unnecessarily long email chain. Meeting scheduler apps take the pain out of getting meetings on the calendar. They let you poll colleagues and friends on the best date and time to meet, make your availability known to others, and ensure you don't double-book a time slot.
There are quite a few different flavors of meeting scheduler apps, from email plugins to websites you can use anonymously. Knowing the range of options benefits you because you might end up needing different apps for different situations.
What Makes a Great Meeting Scheduler?
The best meeting scheduler apps are easy to use, offer good value, and either provide something unique or do it better than others. Those criteria were the main points of consideration when choosing apps for this list of the best meeting schedulers.
Most (though not all) meeting scheduler apps connect to your online calendar, such as Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook. They look at your schedule to help you identify times when you're free for meetings. Often, they have tools for sending invitation to the people with whom you need to meet so you can find out when would be best for them. Many scheduling apps also write new appointments on your calendar for you.
But not all scheduler apps contain such rich features, and you wouldn't necessarily want them to. For example, some apps are more pared down but excel at speed. Others are available on mobile platforms. One app that made this list has very few features but is free and anonymous to use, and that may be ideal if you're meeting with people who have security and privacy concerns. Imagine trying to organize people in your community to meet about some sensitive topic and asking everyone to register with their name and email address. You could end up driving people away before your meeting takes place.
The apps that made this list represent the diverse needs people have when looking to arrange meetings and events.
The Best Meeting Scheduler Apps
- Boomerang Calendar (Gmail plugin)
Best Gmail plugin meeting scheduler app
- Calendly (Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for letting others schedule meetings with you
- Doodle (Android, iOS, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for Best meeting scheduler app for mobile use
- FreeBusy (Outlook, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for coordinating inside and outside an organization
- Meetin.gs (Android, iOS, Outlook, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for managing and preparing for meetings
- MeetingBird (Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for using with Front email client
- Rallly (Web)
Best free meeting scheduler app for anonymous use
- Vyte.in(iOS, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for seamless scheduling in Google Calendar
- X.ai (Web)
Best AI assistant meeting scheduler app
Best Gmail plugin meeting scheduler app
Boomerang Calendar (from the same team who created the email assistant app Boomerang for Gmail), is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that plugs into Gmail and Google Calendar, giving it direct access to your schedule as well as your email. It gives you a few ways to figure out agreeable meeting times and get them onto both your calendar and your colleagues'.
For example, one option is to pull up a view of your calendar while you're composing an email and select spans of time when you're free. Boomerang Calendar then embeds a view of your calendar showing the options so that you can send them to the people you need to meet. Your recipients have the option to click on a time that works to confirm the meeting in one shot. Once finalized, the meeting details show up in a Google Calendar event.
Another options is to embed into an email a calendar view of your free and busy times over the next few days or the following week.
Boomerang Calendar does not display the details of other events that are on your calendar to your recipients. Rather, it only shows when you are busy or free, and crucially, the times you've suggested to meet. Still, some people may find Boomerang a bit intrusive, seeing as it has access to your calendar, email, and contacts. Be sure to comb through Boomerang Calendar's privacy policy if you're on the fence.
Boomerang Calendar Pricing: Free
Best meeting scheduler app for letting others schedule meetings with you
Calendly lets other people schedule meetings with you by showing them your availability and offering them different types of appointments they can create. It's an ideal app for anyone who gets a lot of meeting requests and needs a simple but clear reply.
You start by giving Calendly insight into when you're free by connecting it to your calendar, which can be Google Calendar, iCal, Microsoft Office 365, or Outlook. Then you create different meeting options for the types of meetings you offer, such as "30-minute phone interview" or "initial client intake meeting." Calendly has a slew of details you can add to each meeting type you offer. Finally, you send a link to people who need to schedule meetings with them so that they can see when you're available and request the meetings they need.
Calendly syncs all the confirmed appointments to your calendar and offers to create an event on your invitees' calendars as well. There are tools for setting up an automatic reminder email to attendees, too.
While Calendly works well for scheduling meetings with individuals or team members within an organization, its custom events and outgoing links make it ideal for connecting with external clients, customers, and colleagues. Calendly integrates with Zapier, which expands the number of integrations you have between it and other apps and software.
Calendly Pricing: Free with limited features; paid plans from $8/month
Doodle (Android, iOS, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for mobile use
Doodle works well for picking a time and date for both professional and personal events, and for sharing your availability with others. Whether you're organizing a family dinner or an all-hands meeting, Doodle has a friendly interface and the right options to make planning simple for everyone. It's also one of the few meeting schedules with mobile apps for both Android and iOS.
At its core, Doodle is a polling app, but it's specifically for choosing times and dates. When you set up a poll, you don't have to limit people to replying to each suggestion with only a yes or no, as you can add "if need be" for instances when the timing isn't ideal but could work. You can also limit the number of yes votes each respondent gives. Additionally, you can invite people to your poll by email, or generate a link to a public URL and share it however you like.
Doodle also lets you create a unique URL where you can permanently display your availability based on a connected calendar, known as your MeetMe page. Google Calendar, Microsoft Office 365, and Outlook are supported, with an option to add other calendars via ICS feed. People who visit your MeetMe page can request a meeting by marking out a free time slot that works for them.
With a paid Doodle members, you get advanced meeting scheduling features, such as the ability to quickly see who hasn't answered a poll yet, based on those you've invited, as well as custom branding for MeetMe pages.
Doodle Pricing: Free with limited features; paid plans from $49/year
Best meeting scheduler app for coordinating inside and outside an organization
If you want a meeting scheduler that you can use both inside and outside your organization, FreeBusy is the app for you. It works well across organizations because it integrates with just about any calendar that someone might use. You can connect to calendars hosted in Facebook, Google, IBM Verse, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook, Oracle, OwnCloud, Salesforce, Yahoo, and Zimbra. It also integrates with several popular video conferencing systems, such as BlueJeans and Zoom. There's a plugin for Outlook and an extension for Chrome as well.
With FreeBusy, you have two options for scheduling a meeting. One option is to create a specific meeting, add participants (either by email or from a list of contacts you regularly meet), and suggest a time when you're free. If the suggested time doesn't work for everyone else, they can view your availability over the next week and suggest a new time based likely to suit you, too.
The other option is to share a link to your unique FreeBusy page, which shows when you're available. Anyone with the link can request a meeting with you in just a few clicks. You then accept or reject the proposed meetings. The FreeBusy page also has settings that let you build in buffer time between meetings and restrict the list of people who can request a meeting.
Because it offers so many integrations, FreeBusy works extremely well across organizations who might use different tools. Its friendly interface and extensions make it a helpful too internally for company use, too.
FreeBusy Pricing: Free with limited features; paid plans from $6/month
Meetin.gs (Android, iOS, Outlook, Web)
Best meeting scheduler app for managing and preparing for meetings
Meetin.gs is an all-in-one meeting tool for creating meetings and managing your meeting schedule. The app lets you create a personal meeting page where visitors can request a meeting with you by viewing available time slots on your calendar. You can also create different types of meeting requests, such as a 30-minute interview by Skype or a 15-minute debrief at a specific location, so that when people request a meeting, they know your preferences for where and who long you'll meet.
The app also has a dashboard where you see all your upcoming meetings and relevant details on a timeline. One of the best aspects of Meetin.gs, however, is that it guides you toward holding better meetings because it includes tools for creating agendas and recording action items that result from your meetings. The web app lets you connect to Google Calendar easily, and you can create connections to other calendars by setting up an ICS-calendar feed. You'll need the iOS or Android mobile app to connect with other online calendars, including Outlook, Yahoo, and AOL.
Meetin.gs Pricing: from $12/month per person
Best meeting scheduler app for using with Front email client
Meetingbird is a full featured meeting scheduler app from the same company that created Front, a shared email inbox for teams. It's for people who have frequent meetings and who use either Front or Gmail, as there are integrations for those two email clients via a Chrome extension.
With the Chrome extension installed, Meetingbird shows you your calendar alongside your email, letting you see times when you're available to meet with others. You can also generate calendar invitations and share a link that shows your availability, all without ever leaving your inbox. The app also has a polling tool as well for finding the best time and date to meet with a large group of people. Meetingbird also lets you create meeting templates that you and other people in your organization can use to quickly set up a commonly held meeting, such as a 15-minute phone screening for new job applicants. Another excellent feature in Meetingbird is the ability to reserve time for tentative events and block out times when you don't want to take any meetings at all.
Note that to create a Meetingbird account, you need a Google or Office 365 account. There's no option to sign up using an email address and password. It's the right app to pick, however, if you use the Front email app because it integrates so well with it.
Meetingbird Pricing: Free for up to 25 meetings a month; $9/month for Pro
Best free meeting scheduler app for anonymous use
Show of hands: Who's available Monday? How about Tuesday? That's the concept behind the very simple web app Rallly (with three 'l's), which helps you and your associates find an agreeable date to get together.
The real secret sauce for this tool is that the person who creates the poll and everyone who answers it can be completely anonymous. You enter a few suggestions for when you'd like to meet and invite people to answer your poll by either entering their email addresses or sending them a link. For every poll you create, a discussion box appears below it where anyone can leave comments.
The main drawback to Rallly is it only lets you suggest dates, not times. It doesn't have any management tools or advanced scheduling features, either, much less offer connectivity with your calendar. But it does offer anonymity, and in certain circles, that's a critical component. It's free and open source, too.
Rallly Pricing: Free
Best meeting scheduler app for seamless scheduling in Google Calendar
Vyte.in is a meeting scheduler app for web and iOS that offers two main services: scheduling by polling and a custom booking page. You can invite people to vote on a meeting time and date by email, and they can reply via email with the times that work for them just as easily, without requiring them to create an account. Vyte.in then tracks who chooses which time and lets you know when is best to schedule your event.
When you create a personal booking page with Vyte.in, you get a custom URL where people can see your availability and request an appropriate time and date for a meeting. With a Pro account, you can set a default time for meeting requests and automatically build in buffer times between meetings.
The app offers a few special features when you use it with other people who also have Vyte.in accounts and use Google Calendar. For example, the app can show your colleagues' availability alongside yours whenever you're searching for a time to meet. When everyone who's invited to the meeting confirms the time, date, and place, Vyte.in automatically schedules the meeting on your calendar and sends invitations to attendees. The app also blocks of tentative meeting times before they're set in stone to prevent you from accidentally double-booking your time. Vyte.in integrates with other tools such as Slack and Webex video conferencing to make it as easy as possible to get your meetings started.
Vyte.in Pricing: Free with limitations; from $10/month for Pro; custom pricing for enterprises
Best AI assistant meeting scheduler app
X.ai is an unusual meeting scheduler app that works by acting as your personal AI assistant when you use email to create meetings. First, you create an account and give x.ai access to your calendar, phone number, Skype ID, and other information. Then, whenever you need to schedule a meeting by email, you CC a unique x.ai email address that corresponds to an AI bot. You get two, called Amy and Andrew, to start. The bots become your personal assistants.
In the email body, you give your bots instructions by starting a fresh paragraph with their name. For example, you can write, "Amy, set up a 30-minute phone call with Jill. I'll call her." Your assistant will make sure the event gets onto your calendar with all the correct details.
You can also kick off an email thread by asking one of your bots to set something up with another person on the chain. After that first message, your bot takes over and replies to the meeting attendees suggesting dates and times that work for you based on your current calendar. As people reply, your bot locks in the details and eventually sends a calendar invite to all the meeting attendees.
While x.ai also offers a booking page and a few other tools, the main attraction here is the AI assistance. X.ai is the meeting scheduler app to choose if you just can't shake your colleagues from scheduling via email. Note that you'll need to sign in with Google, Outlook, or Okta, even if you create an account using an email address and password.
x.ai Pricing: from $8/month
Make Meetings Better
The right meeting scheduler tool helps you get meetings onto your calendar quickly and efficiently, and that helps keep you productive. But you don't have to stop there. Another way to stay productive is to automatically have notifications sent you before a meeting occurs in whatever app or device suits you best. For example, by using Zapier, you get SMS notifications however far in advance you like before events in your Google Calendar start. Or you might send a link via Slack to all meeting participants a few minutes before a web conference.
Anything you can do to make your routine of scheduling meetings more efficient is a win for everyone because it allows you to focus on preparing for the meeting instead of finding the right time for it.
This article originally appeared in 2014 and was updated in 2017 and 2018. Emily Irish, Joe Stych, and Paula DuPont contributed. Calendar icon courtesy of Edward Boatman, The Noun Project.
from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/1vhwu9N
Comments
Post a Comment