Why group meetings are hard to book
Finding a time for two people is easy. For six, it can take days. Every extra person removes more of the week, and the chance that everyone is free at the same moment falls quickly. Add a second company, with its own calendars you cannot see, and the back-and-forth can outlast the reason for the meeting.
The answer is rarely a cleverer tool. It is deciding a few things before anyone is asked about their availability.
Decide who must be there
Most group meetings get harder to book because the invitation list is longer than it needs to be.
- Separate required from optional. Which people does the meeting fail without? Usually a decision-maker, the person who will do the work, and whoever holds the key information. Everyone else can be optional, or receive the notes.
- Find the one person whose calendar decides it. There is often one person, perhaps a senior sponsor or a specialist, who is hardest to book. Start with their availability and fit everyone else around it.
- Consider two smaller meetings. If the group splits naturally, say technical and commercial, two shorter meetings can be easier to book and more useful than one long one.
Narrow the window before you ask
Asking "when are you all free next week?" invites a dozen different answers. Narrow it first.
- Set the length. A 30-minute meeting fits into far more calendars than an hour. Our guide to how long a meeting should be can help you choose.
- Set the range of days, such as "between Tuesday and Thursday next week".
- Respect working hours, especially across time zones. A slot that is fine for most people but 7 a.m. for one is not really free.
Choose a way to find the time
Different situations call for different methods.
| Situation | What works | | --- | --- | | Everyone is in your organisation | Check free/busy in the shared calendar and send the invitation directly | | A few external people, one key person | Ask the key person for three options, then confirm with the rest | | Many external people | A scheduling poll with four to six candidate times | | Senior people with assistants | Agree the time assistant to assistant |
A few rules make any method work better. Offer specific options rather than open questions, set a deadline for responses ("I'll book the best time on Thursday at noon"), and do not wait for every optional person to answer.
Our guide to booking links and proposing times covers the one-to-one version of the same choices.
Across time zones and companies
When the group spans time zones, the overlap in working hours may be only an hour or two, or nothing at all.
- Find the overlap first. The time zone converter shows every attendee's local time and highlights the hours that fall in everyone's working day.
- Rotate the inconvenience. For a recurring meeting with no comfortable time, alternate which region takes the early or late slot. Our guide to scheduling across time zones explains how.
- Write every time with its zone, in the invitation and the follow-up.
Lock it in and keep it
Once you have a time, protect it.
- Send the invitation straight away, with the agenda in the first lines and a calendar file for anyone outside your calendar system. The add-to-calendar generator creates one.
- Name an owner who will handle changes, so the group does not renegotiate the whole thing when one person needs to move.
- Decide what happens if someone cannot attend. Usually the meeting goes ahead with a delegate or notes, unless a required person drops out.
For meetings that start a customer relationship, such as a customer kickoff, the effort is worth it: getting the right people in the room at the start saves weeks later.
CallShark is being built to find times that work across people, rooms, and companies, and to keep everyone's calendar in step when one of them changes. The product is temporarily down.