Scheduling Resources

​Scheduling is the bane of my existence. I think for a lot of us, we would love to figure out a way to offset scheduling or making things easier to determine overlapping times for meetings, share notes, collaborate with colleagues, all while making sure we aren't giving up our privacy. So, here are a couple of tools and ways that I've tried to manage my schedules and meetings:

​Before I go further, I should note that I'm not sponsored by any of these things. I just like them as platforms and have engaged in them at various capacities. Most of them have a free version and then an upgraded version for pay with more features. 

Calendly offers a scheduling automation where you can create set availabilities (with different blocks of time for 15, 30, 45, 60 minutes, etc.) where then people can sign up for appointments. I like it because you can customize the form and confirmation, which is particularly helpful if you're doing appointments, interviews, or things like student/faculty advising meetings. 

WeJoinIn is essentially a really nicely designed sign-up sheet. I've loved it as a digital pass-around for when students need to sign-up for groupwork. It similarly works well for coordinating volunteers or holding office hours. I also like it because you can download the times as an excel so in case you need to calculate hours (*cough for mid-tenure or annual reviews for faculty), it's a nice platform. 

You Can Book Me is a scheduler with benefits like a lot of different languages and customized forms (similar to the other platforms mentioned). It has a lot of additional features like customizing with your logo so I've seen this more for corporations, but overall, I liked it for its pretty interface. 

When2Meet is probably the one I use the most often, mostly because I've loved it for one-time overlaps. You can set a date/time range and then have people mark their availabilities where the concentrated colors shows the most availability. Other similar platforms include Lettuce Meet and When Is Good (though for the latter, only you can see the overlaps vs. everyone seeing them).

Doodle: the classic, and I know for me, the one that started it all. Doodle's platform allows for you to pre-determine various availabilities and ranges for meetings (e.g., different options for a 2-hour meeting) that then people can mark as available, not available, and maybe. 

Lastly, sometimes, I actually just use a basic excel (haha) and have found that platform to work best as a very simple platform. I'm sure there are tons more that I haven't check out and would love to know so feel free to add more suggestions and thoughts from the comments below!