Scheduling tool
A general term for online services that automate presenting candidate dates / collecting answers / deciding the best date.
A scheduling tool is software for efficiently gathering several people’s availability and deciding the best date and time for a meeting. It automates the traditional back-and-forth emails about candidate dates and greatly shortens the time until the date is fixed.
Two methods - poll-based and booking-based
By how they work, the scheduling tools out there broadly fall into two methods. It is not that one is better; which suits you depends on the scheduling situation.
| Method | How it works | Suitable situations |
|---|---|---|
| Poll-based | The organizer presents candidate dates and participants answer with ○△×. The date with the most matches is confirmed | Scheduling that looks for “the greatest common divisor of everyone’s availability,” such as drinking parties / events / large meetings |
| Booking-based | Publishes open slots linked to the organizer’s calendar, and the other person picks one slot to confirm immediately | Scheduling where you “want to confirm quickly one to one,” such as sales meetings / interviews / one-on-ones |
Criteria for choosing a tool
After the method, what matters next is the burden on participants. Tools that require respondents to register an account or install an app lower the response rate when scheduling with outside parties. Judge also by other aspects, such as whether automatic calendar integration is needed, whether you schedule mostly with outside people or mostly internally, and whether people can finish answering on a smartphone alone. If you schedule a lot with outside parties, a poll-based tool that needs no registration is suitable, while for uses that repeatedly set up meetings of the same format, such as sales and recruiting, the booking-based method is efficient.
Common misunderstandings when adopting one
The expectation that “once you bring in a tool, scheduling finishes by itself” is only half right. The design of the scheduling itself, such as the quality of the candidate dates (whether they are times the other person is likely to be free), setting a response deadline, and reminding those who have not answered, remains even with a tool. What the tool cuts is the work of tallying and the back-and-forth, not the decisions in scheduling. Adopting it with this distinction understood makes disappointment less likely.