[Productivity] Useful meeting schedulers in a graduate school
When you become a graduate student, you have to schedule various meetings with a relatively large number of people (when the number of people exceeds 5, it becomes too tricky to find the time). Typically, finding the time for everyone to attend a research or student association meeting is time-consuming and tiring. And setting up Google Calendar and sending out Zoom links is a hassle.
The following services will save you a lot of time! Graduate students are always short on time, so we should save even a minute.
Zoom for G-suite
https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/zoom_for_g_suite/364750910244
With this Chrome extension, you can dramatically reduce the time to create Zoom meeting links. It syncs perfectly with Google Calendar events, and any deletions or changes to events will be reflected in the zoom link. Of course, Google Calendar provides google meet scheduling by default, but we know that many still prefer zoom. This extension even works with the Google Calendar application.
When2meet
This simple and intuitive website helps people manually enter their available times and find common times. I usually use this site when a new semester begins, everyone’s regular weekly schedule has changed, so we need to set a new regular weekly meeting time. In addition, it has the feature of setting the time zone based on the respondent to avoid confusion regarding the time conversion.
It also gives a very intuitive indication of how many people are available in a particular timeslot through the intensity of the color. Hovering over each timeslot gives information on who is available/unavailable in that time slot.
Doodle poll
Doodle poll is the “freemium” service that provides basic services for free but additional/advanced features at a premium. The basic features we need in the doodle poll are free: Group poll (find commonly available times) and Booking page (show and book available times based on my Google Calendar).
Using the group poll feature, you can create timeslots based on your available time slots (you can sync your google calendar so you can easily select them) and send links to people. By syncing their own calendars to their polls, they can automatically mark their availability much easier than when2meet.
Calendly
Calendly is very similar to Doodle Poll. You can create one free booking page (you need to subscribe to it if you need more than 2 booking pages with different lengths of time) and automate the process of booking virtual meetings by integrating it with your video conferencing accounts (such as Google Meet or Zoom).
