Canadian Dental Association

A Doodle User Experience Study

The Canadian Dental Association is a non-profit organization of 50 volunteer dentists and dental professionals that represent over 20,000 dentists in Canada. They serve the public as a unified voice for dentistry by managing key oral health issues and coordinating dental health awareness programs that reach 37 million Canadians. They also provide numerous services and support for practicing dentists and dental students alike. The team at Doodle spoke to Dean Smith, IT manager at the CDA, about the challenges of scheduling meetings with a team of busy dentists.

Coordinating a team of dentists can be a challenge

The CDA has a staff of volunteers that, being dentists, aren’t sitting in front of a computer all day. They’re busy seeing patients; their office hours are unpredictable. The work they do with the CDA typically takes place on evenings and weekends. Dean told us that there are usually 20 dentists on any given committee, and, before Doodle, it took a lot of back and forth to get everyone together. He recalls that they would send out an email with 5 possible times to the group and then coordinate all of the responses. Now, when sending out a Doodle poll to organize a committee meeting, it’s easy to see the time option that works best for everyone in the convenient table view. Says Dean, “really for us, it’s a time saver. It introduces efficiencies.”

Doodle is perfect for large groups and one-on-one meetings

Like any organization, the CDA also runs on daily one-on-one meetings and training sessions. For these regular meetings, Doodle 1:1 is the perfect tool. With Doodle 1:1 you can choose several time options and send them out to any number of guests. Once a time slot is chosen it’s booked automatically to your calendar and your guest’s calendar. For the rest of your invitees, this time slot is no longer shown, so you’ll never have to worry about double-booking. On top of the simplicity of two-step 1:1 meeting planning, Doodle is perfect for scheduling with people outside of your organization, whose calendar you may not have access to. Dean says using Doodle in those situations is “critical.”

Built for teams, large and small

As head of IT, Dean can manage his team’s 50 different Doodle accounts centrally from his Doodle dashboard. The entire team enjoys Premium features like poll deadlines, automatic reminders, and professional meeting invitations with branded colors and the CDA logo. Doodle also offers Enterprise customers world-class security and single-sign-on authentication. Doodle can also integrate with Zapier and thousands of applications businesses use every day, reducing the administrative work around scheduling to zero.

Use cases: Team meetings, external stakeholders, one-on-ones, training sessions, events