Using Cloud Services : Exploring Online Scheduling Applications

As anyone in a large office knows, scheduling a meeting can be a frustrating experience. Not only do you have to clear time from all the attendees’ individual schedules, you also have to make sure that the right-sized meeting room is available at the designated time. Experts claim that it takes seven emails or voice mails to arrange a single meeting; a typical businessperson can spend more than 100 hours each year just scheduling meetings.

Enter, then, the online scheduling application. This web-based app takes much of the pain out of scheduling meetings, for both large and small groups. The typical app requires all users to enter their individual calendars beforehand. When you schedule a meeting, the app checks attendees’ schedules for the first available free time for all. The app then generates automated email messages to inform attendees of the meeting request (and the designated time), followed by automatic confirmation emails when attendees accept the invitation.

Professionals who schedule appointments with their clients—doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, and the like—face similar scheduling challenges. For this purpose, separate web-based appointment scheduling applications exist. These apps function similarly to traditional meeting schedulers, but with a focus on customer appointments.

Jiffle

Let’s start by looking at web-based solutions for meeting scheduling. Our first app is Jiffle (www.jifflenow.com), which schedules meetings, appointments, and the like for the enterprise environment. To track employees’ free time, it synchronizes seamlessly with both Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar. It also offers its own Jiffle Calendar application.

Jiffle allows the originating user to mark available time slots on his calendar, as shown in Figure 1, and then share them with proposed attendees via a Jiffle-generated email invitation. These attendees view the invitation, log in to the Jiffle website, and then select their preferred time slots from the ones proposed. Based on these responses, Jiffle picks the best time for the meeting and notifies all attendees via an automatic confirmation email.

Figure 1. Scheduling a meeting with Jiffle.

For smaller companies, Jiffle is free for up to 10 meeting confirmations per month. For larger companies, Jiffle Plus, Jiffle Pro, and Jiffle Corporate plans are available.

Presdo

Unlike Jiffle, Presdo (www.presdo.com) is a scheduling tool that isn’t limited to a single company. Presdo lets you schedule meetings and events with anyone who has an email address. As you can see in Figure 7.11, adding an event is as simple as entering a description into a box. You then enter the email addresses of other participants, and Presdo emails out the appropriate invites. When an attendee responds, he’s automatically added to the event’s guest list. (And, for the convenience of all guests, it’s a one-button process to add an event to a user’s Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, or Apple iCal calendar.)

Figure 2. Viewing a scheduled Presdo event.

Diarised

Diarised (www.diarised.com) is, like Presdo, a web-based meeting maker that users across different companies can use. It helps you pick the best time for a meeting by sending out emails to invitees, letting them choose the best times for them, and then sending you a summary of those best dates. You pick the final date, Diarised notifies everyone via email, and your meeting is scheduled.

Windows Live Events

Event scheduling is now part of Microsoft’s bag of tricks. Microsoft’s Windows Live Events (home.services.spaces.live.com/events/) is a customized version of its Live Spaces offering; it lets Live Spaces users organize events and share activities between participants.

To schedule an event, you set up a list of invitees and then send out a mass email with a link back to your Live Event site. (All the event details are also available as an RSS feed.) Information about the event is posted on the site itself, which also serves as a place for attendees to come back after the event and share their photos, videos, and blog posts about the event.

With its user-friendly consumer features, Live Events isn’t robust enough (or professional enough) for most business users. It is, however, a nice way to plan more personal and informal events.

Schedulebook

Schedulebook (www.schedulebook.com) offers several different types of web-based scheduling services. Depending on the application, you can use Schedulebook to schedule employees, customers, or other interested parties.

The company’s three offerings are

  • Schedulebook Professionals, which is a business-oriented schedule/calendar/planning application

  • Schedulebook Office, which schedules the use of any shared resource, such as company meeting rooms or even vacation homes

  • Schedulebook Aviation, which is used by the aviation industry to schedule aircraft, flight training, and similar services

Acuity Scheduling

If you run a business that requires scheduling appointments with clients or customers, Acuity Scheduling (www.acuityscheduling.com) can help ease your scheduling operations. Acuity Scheduling lets you clients schedule their own appointments 24/7 via a web-based interface, like the one in Figure 3; you don’t have to manually schedule any appointment.

Figure 3. A typical client scheduling screen from Acuity Scheduling.

You can make the scheduling operation as simple or as complex as you like. For example, some businesses might include new client information forms as part of the online scheduling process. And, of course, the web-based software eliminates scheduling conflict, making for a more efficient schedule for you.

AppointmentQuest

Like Acuity Scheduling, AppointmentQuest (www.appointmentquest.com) is designed to solve the scheduling problems of busy professionals. This application not only enables clients to make and you to accept appointments over the web, it also lets you manage personnel, schedules, and other calendar-related items.

hitAppoint

Our last scheduling application, hitAppoint (www.hitappoint.com), also enables online client booking. Like the previous similar application, it’s ideal for any business that requires the making of customer appointments—barbershops, hair salons, doctor and dentist offices, consultants, financial advisors, car repair shops, computer technicians, and the like.