Ever try to find where your schedule overlaps with others for a meeting or group project? It can be a pain unless you use a handy dandy tool like Doodle (doodle.com)! Doodle allows anyone to create two types of polls for free without so much as signing up for an account. You can either “schedule an event” or “make a choice.” I am most familiar with the former, although the latter looks and works pretty much the same.
After assigning the poll a name, description, and administrator name, you are able to select dates from a calendar. The next screen allows you to select potential times. Click finish and voila! You have a poll. Send the link to your participants and they can select their available times quickly and easily. You can opt to receive email notices when participants respond or check back to see the results on your own.
There are additional handy features — such as comment support — and settings — limiting number of entries per person, for example. So play around with it a little. The coolest feature to note is on step 3 when creating a poll. There you will find a link to enable time zone support. You select the time zone you are in before submitting the survey. When participants come to the survey, the time zone of their IP address will be automatically filled in and the times presented will be in their local time! (Note: Participants can also manual select a time zone). No more adding or subtracting hours, figuring out what zone the poll creator is in, etc!
Neat, huh?
Totally cool! Thanks for posting this, D’Arcy. I’m curious about how you use this tool – for school, or work, or what? Are there any facets or limitations that you don’t like about it?
I wonder if this would be a good thing to utilize in planning future FLIP meetings?
I use it for any and everything related to scheduling. I used it just last week (as a participant) to schedule candidate phone interview times for a hiring committee. The week before that I put one out to my best friends to aid in the selection of a date for a party I am throwing. And in previous semesters, I have used it a ton to schedule group project meetings. So… work, school, and personal life!
As for shortcomings, I have zero complaints. It does what it was designed to do beautifully. If you have a scheduling need, use it. If you have another sort of polling need, try surveymonkey. But that’s another blog post entirely. 🙂
doodle is very cool! It’s a great way to set up meetings with people who have crazy schedules… you know, like everyone we know! Just kidding!