Bookable Calendar Adds Custom Questions to Drive Better Meeting Outcomes

I recently read an article in the Huffington Post about US presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s climate justice plan that would direct nearly half the benefits of its proposed $2 trillion clean electricity investment to poor and minority communities. This is certainly a noble plan. 

Climate change debates aside, what struck me most is how complicated, disorganized and confusing the process has been for the two New York state panels (who have been tasked with how to implement and measure the plan) to meet. 

Why am I bringing up this article, you ask? To show you how scheduling meetings, something that should be effortless and quick, can easily become complicated, drawn out and, in the worst cases, completely derail important plans like Biden’s climate justice plan. To quote Eddie Bautista, the executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance: “It’s Doodle poll Hell.” 

Because scheduling ‘hell’ is the exact reason Doodle exists, we’ve taken another step to make scheduling meetings as frictionless as possible, while also helping all involved get better outcomes from those meetings. No one has time to waste right now. So, keeping meetings more focused and productive is key. A big part of that comes down to gathering necessary information, insights and feedback from participants before the meeting so that the meeting discussions don’t veer off track. 

Bookable Calendar, as you know, is one of our advanced features and allows you to create a personalized scheduling link that shows your availability in real-time. This has been a godsend for many people who want to speed up the time it takes to get meetings booked with customers, partners and candidates. It also automates the process by letting you create thousands of personalized Bookable Calendar links (set it and forget it). 

So, we’re excited to share that we’ve added Custom Questions as a new feature in Bookable Calendar. Whenever you open your Bookable Calendar, you can type in custom questions for invitees to answer (optional or mandatory) before they book in time with you. This will bring you one step closer to having more focused, effective meetings. And I can see this being extremely helpful for the NY state panels currently stuck in ‘scheduling hell’ to make Biden’s climate justice plan a reality. 

So what are the benefits of being able to add custom questions into your Bookable Calendar links, you ask? There are countless benefits, but let me share three specific reasons you’ll want to start using Custom Questions with your Bookable Calendar.

• Make better use of participants’ time during meetings:

   

  There’s nothing worse than sitting in a meeting and constantly looking at the clock – anticipating when the ‘dreaded’ meeting will finally be over. This usually happens because the meeting is disorganized, lacks focus, goes off topic and ends up requiring more meetings to make decisions that should have been made during the initial meeting. Rather than waste time asking for ‘contextual’ or background information in the meeting itself, use Custom Questions to ask the participants before the meeting. And choose whether the responses are optional or mandatory. If the meeting wouldn’t be able to go forward without critical information, then make it mandatory. That’s time saved during the meeting. 

• Prevent confusion and miscommunication:

   

  When working in groups, which is an almost daily occurrence in workplaces, miscommunication can lead to errors on projects and damage trust among teams, customers and partners. By typing  questions into the Bookable Calendar, employees can avoid confusion and miscommunication. 

• Drive better outcomes from meetings:

   

  Unproductive meetings have become the bane of our existence. The whole purpose of meetings is to share information, get input from important stakeholders, provide a clear direction and make decisions that will enable projects/initiatives to move forward effectively and deliver strong results. But that often doesn’t happen due to poor planning and lack of communication/information sharing before meetings take place. 

If you don’t have a Bookable Calendar, learn more about it on the Bookable Calendar page.

Bookable Calendar is now Booking Page.