Tag Archives: calendar

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Meeting Scheduler: TimeBridge

Have you ever tried to set up a meeting with people who use different calendars? At best, it can be a challenge.

TimeBridge, a PC Magazine Editors’ Choice, helps you set up meetings for those with unrelated scheduling systems. You’ve got Outlook; she’s got Google Calendar; he’s got Thunderbird, and so on. Instead of playing phone-tag and worrying about time zones, you just send out the invites, and TimeBridge handles the confirmations and reminders. You only need to know the e-mail addresses of each person you want to invite. Each person receives a message with the options for a meeting time; they don’t need a TimeBridge account to reply. As the originator, you get a message if your various invitees can’t make it at the proposed times.

Once the meeting is set, everyone gets an e-mail confirmation with links to import the info into various calendars, including Google, Outlook, Yahoo!, and Apple’s iCal. Currently, the service is free but TimeBridge has plans to charge for premium services in the future.

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“Add this Event” On Your Web Site

Seminars, education forums, and other events are an excellent way to market the services and value your agency provides. Creating an “add this event” link on your Web site is a simple way to help your clients or prospects automatically update their Outlook calendars with the event details.

It’s simple. First, create a new event in your Outlook calendar. Include the event name, specific location information (put in the location line), the time, and any other information you want to include in the notes section. Then click on File|Save As. In the “Save as type” drop-down list, choose the vCalendar (*.vcs) file format. Name your file something relevant (e.g. Workers Comp-Seminar.vcs) and then upload that file to your Web server.

On your Web site (or in an e-mail you send) just point a link to the URL where the file resides on your Web server. When your readers click on the link, the file will open and—voila—Outlook adds it to their calendars.

You may want to include simple instructions. And be sure to test it before you post the link on your site or in an e-mail.