Doodle Blog

With our latest release, we proudly took the Doodle for Lotus Notes widget out of beta status. Lotus Notes users can now take full advantage of the seamless Doodle-integration: Doodle-polls can be initiated and replied to directly from Lotus Notes and the meeting time agreed on can be saved with one click in the calendar.

By integrating Doodle into Lotus Notes, we have given a tremendous number of organizations, including small businesses and large enterprises, the means to close the gap between disparate calendars and to make scheduling virtually effortless. Michael Snijders from Chocolats Camille Bloch SA, one of the earliest adopters of the widget, said:

This is an excellent widget. Finally, we can use the full power of Lotus Notes which allows us to schedule our meetings internally, and with the rest of the world! I initially began using Doodle for private meet-ups, but now I’m able to use it professionally as well.

Learn more on the Lotus Notes widget or Doodle’s further calendar integrations!

We’ve improved the way Doodle integrates into Google Calendar. If you use Google Calendar, you can get the following features:

• When you participate in a poll, Doodle will suggest how to fill in the poll based on the information in your Google Calendar. You can also choose examine the relevant calendar information.
• You will have the option to automatically add tentative appointments to your Google calendar for all the time slots that you accept on Doodle.
• Once the final date and time is fixed, Doodle will remove the tentative appointments and add the final date and time to the calendar.

In summary, the new integration adds new functionality and is considerably faster and more reliable than the old way. And it takes only a second to set it up: Go to your MyDoodle settings and click “Connect new Google Calendar”, confirm, done. If you don’t have a (free!) MyDoodle account yet, register here now.

MyDoodle settings to integrate into third-party calendars

Only a couple of hours to go this year. So it’s time to look back at some of Doodle’s highlights 2009:

• Passed the 3 million users mark in April and continued to experience very healthy growth rates ever since then
• Named one of Switzerland’s best web sites, one of Switzerland’s most innovative companies, and a global innovator
• Conducted and published a much cited international study on scheduling behavior in corporations
• Launched the Doodle iPhone app
• Introduced paid services for organizations (Branded Doodle) and private individuals (Premium Doodle)
• And, most importantly, implemented a long list of improvements and extensions to make scheduling even easier, quicker, and more comfortable: close date/time polls, invite and inform participants from within Doodle directly (including an address book), XING integration, locations and maps, file attachments, calendar integrations (Outlook, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, …), more translations, API, etc.

We would like to thank all our users and customers for their support and wish you all the best for 2010!

Our most recent annoucements were focussed on our paid products: the advanced efficiency features for Premium Doodle and Branded Doodle and the iPhone App. However, Doodle’s free functionality made great progress as well. Here are are the most important new features of 2009:

• Close polls and pick final date and time
• RESTful API
• ICS Feed to connect electronic calendars
• Doodle Outlook Plugin
• Invite & Contact for Doodle invitations
• XING application
• Locations with Google Maps
• File upload with drop.io
• Doodle Gadget for Firefox, Gmail and Google Calendar
• Doodle Widget for Lotus Notes
• Mobile Doodle: out of Beta and MyDoodle support
• Languages 27, 28 and 29: Czech, Hebrew, and Indonesian

We’re pleased to report that our iPhone app is now available. Through our collaboration with Neoos, we are providing core Doodle features in a native iPhone way that make scheduling even easier and more fun on the run.  In Switzerland we are already experiencing an overwhelming reception–thank you to all the early adopters who so quickly grabbed the app and have provided us with such positive feedback! It is available in the iTunes App Store for $ 2.99 or € 2.39.

Learn more and grab the app!

Doodle published a Gadget for iGoogle almost exactly one year ago. It is used heavily and feedbacks are very positive, e.g. this one: “A simple but great plugin to see my Doodles. From the creator of Doodle himself. Cool idea and extremly useful!”

The same gadget can be used in many other places:

• In the sidebar of your Firefox browser: Visit this address, create a bookmark, edit the new bookmark’s properties and activate the “open in sidebar” checkbox, then open the bookmark.
• In your Gmail sidebar: Activate Gmail labs, enable “add any gadget by URL”, go to “Settings / Gadgets” and add the Doodle gadget (URL).
• In your Google Calendar: Activate labs for Google calendar, enable the “add any gadget by URL” gadget and use that gadget to add the Doodle gadget (URL).

Where else can it be used? Tell us in the comments!

And BTW: we also have a Facebook and a XING app. And there are other ways to integrate Doodle with Google’s and others’ calendars. Learn more.

All Doodle users can now effortlessly include attachments within their meeting requests and polls – whether a meeting agenda, invitation, picture or video – thanks to the integrated new feature from the collaboration service drop.io. drop.io and Doodle have a common philosophy: collaboration with an online tool should be dead simple and possible without registration.

After a month-long test phase we can also release the integration of Google Maps. This free feature gives meeting organizers the ability to select a location for a meeting and let it display using Google Maps.

And finally, here’s some news for our enterprise Branded Doodle clients: you can now fully customize your Branded Doodle environment for internal and external use. The theming editor is only available for Branded Doodle and Premium Doodle paying customers, however, the unique URL, access control, and safety features will remain unchanged for paying Branded Doodle customers. Get the full Branded Doodle now!

A new product for Doodle lovers is now available, Premium Doodle: a personal profile that allows you to express your individuality when scheduling. Premium Doodle gives scheduling a whole new identity – yours! You can customize all your Doodle polls with your own colors and add your profile picture which will appear whenever you participate in a poll. For a fee of just $28 annually all polls you initiate and participate in will be ad-free. Premium functionality will also allow you to request personal information such as postal address, e-mail address, and phone number from poll participants – particularly helpful for binding RSVPs. We’re looking forward to welcoming Premium Doodle customers and thank them for the support they give us through it!

Get Premium Doodle now or read more!

Read the media release.

We just finished putting our August release online. Here are the major improvements:

• Extended calendar integration: You were already able to subscribe to the Doodle ICS feed to keep your calendar up-to-date with the latest Doodle information. Starting today, you can also import your calendar information into your MyDoodle account and have Doodle suggest your availabilities based on your calendar whenever you need to fill in a poll. This feature requires you to open a MyDoodle account; afterwards, you will be able to add your calendar feed here.
• Locations: We introduced an optional feature that allows you to specify an event’s location. The feature is based on Google Maps internationally and on Local.ch in Switzerland.
• Improved XING app: Our Doodle XING app was launched only recently and is already among the most popular apps on XING. As a consequence, we get lots of feedback, and we take it seriously by introducing the following improvements: 1) Users can now merge their XING Doodle account with their normal Doodle account and see the combined dashboard in both worlds. 2) Poll participants can easily be found and invited using the new contact search with auto-completion. 3) Additional participants can be invited even after a poll has been set up. To the Doodle XING app…
• More payment methods: We’ve incorporated Moneybookers and are now able to offer many additional and more convenient payment options to our Branded Doodle customers who want to use Doodle for their business, e.g. many credit cards, bank transfer, etc.

Update August 3 2009: Doodle implements 3 improvements for the XING app

Doodle is launch partner of the new XING Partner Ecosystem. Being a social network, XING enables a number of interesting functions: XING members can recognize Doodle polls they have in common with others, they see the profile picture when someone participates in a poll, and they can invite XING contacts to a meeting with just one click. Starting today, Doodle can be easily installed as a XING application.