Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Boomerang Calendar Now Schedules Meetings with Others in One Click
lifehacker.com: Boomerang Calendar already turns Gmail into a great event planning tool, but now it makes scheduling appointments even easier. Just propose a meeting and suggest a few meeting times. When the other person selects one, Boomerang Calendar automatically finalizes the meeting and adds it to both calendars.
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3 comments:
This app seems like it's coming into the game a few innings too late. Apps like this already exist, including Doodle, which seems to be a favorite around the School of Drama. While this app is nice if you only operate out of Gmail, it's kind of useless if you use any other calendar system. Outlook and iCal are completely left out, just to name a few. Those of us who are so old fashioned that we keep our schedules in a hard copy are apparently just screwed. It also seems inconvenient that you can't propose select times to meet, but rather have to share your entire schedule with the other person. This means that you would have to block out time for things like eating and sleeping in order for that time to appear "busy". If you didn't, it could stir up the back and forth of "Your calendar says you're not busy at this time, why can't we meet then?" This app seems like it would have been a good idea 5 years ago, but with all the other apps out there now, it's just one of the many.
This is a cool little app that is a great free option for someone who schedules a lot of one-on-one meetings. I'd love to see the functionality of this app for multi-person meetings, though. Realistically, most of the meetings in our industry are going to need to be scheduled via a platform that allows multiple peoples' schedules and preferences to be viewed at once. Jess, I don't think it's necessary to have your full schedule in Google calendar to use this app. The whole point is that it allows you to pre-select the options that work for you. Obviously it would be simpler if your schedule was already in Google calendar, because then you would be able to easily see your available times, but if you just wanted to use the functionality of the app as a meeting scheduler, you could just use your own calendar to help you figure out your available times, which you would then use as your suggestions for scheduling the meeting. Once a meeting time was selected by your collaborator, you'd have to check your Google calendar and transfer that information over to whatever other calendar you use. So no, this isn't ideal if you don't use Google calendar, but it doesn't mean that the function of the app as a collaborative meeting scheduler isn't useful. Also, your point about having to block out times for eating and sleeping doesn't really seem to apply. The whole point of the app is that you are sharing only your available meeting times, not your entire calendar, with the person you are trying to schedule a meeting with.
I feel that this is a great tool. This is something I could really see myself using. Gmail has become more present in my life and most everyone else's, so it seems, so having this option seems to be a very useful tool. I wonder though if once the time is chosen, if the person who suggested times is notified so they are aware of their schedule instead of having to check to see if the other person responded. I seem to find it hard setting a physical schedule for myself, but I could see myself using this instead of using the calendar I create in my head. This would also be useful in the academic part of life because of the amount of one on one meetings I have constantly with faculty and it could be a better representation of what times are available and choose from.
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