Presdo - a disappointing way to schedule appointments Monday, April 28, 2008
As someone who arranges countless meetings, I'm well aware of the disproportionate amount of time they can take to arrange. It's for this reason that I am always on the lookout for tools that make the process more efficient.
Timetomeet has been my favourite for sometime, albeit services from Timebridge and Whenisgood amongst others have much going for them. This week, I came across Presdo.
Whilst it's simple to use and has a stylish UI, I was disappointed with the service.
First the positives
- the ease of entering proposed times to meet is reminiscent of Google Calendar's quick entry and it successfully interprets different ways of entering dates/times.
- the invites to proposed attendees are quick to send and there is no requirement for invitees to sign-up for the service
- Presdo does offer integration into Google Calendar in the sense that it will put the appointment into your calendar
Drawbacks
- you can only propose one time to meet, which the invitees accept/reject or propose alternate arrangements. This is no better than email, other than the fact that it keeps track of acceptances and much worse when you consider that for a one-to-one meeting, you would typically offer a selection of times to the other person
- If there are multiple alternate suggestions from different invitees, the service doesn't help identify an optimum time
- the invites have to be sent from within the service and can't be sent from within your own email. This is understandable since the service sends a unique link to each invitee which is created "on the fly"
Overall, this one scores a "miss" for me.
Labels: Google Calendar, meeting, Timebridge, Timetomeet
posted by John Wilson @ 9:57 AM Permanent Link
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3 Comments:
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At 4:22 AM,
Unknown said...
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John, thanks very much for your post on Presdo. I'm the founder of Presdo, and would like to comment on a few things. Hope it's OK!
First, it's possible to suggest several times to your guests. Just type in something like "tue, thu or fri at 10am". Dates will work also. If you do this, Presdo will collect all the choices from your guests and "roll up" the best choices for you if the time for an event needs to be changed.
It's true that you can't create an event from email. That certainly would be a great feature to have. -
At 11:24 AM,
John Wilson said...
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Ericinca, thanks for stopping by to comment and congrats on a very stylish and easy to use site. The range of phrases recognised is great.
I just followed your instructions on offering several times to an invitee, but these appeared as comments on the invitation, rather than explicit options for the invitee to select from using the meeting buttons. Am I doing something wrong? -
At 3:10 PM,
Unknown said...
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John, thanks for replying to my post.
Just to clarify, those "comments" are being interpreted by Presdo as alternate times that guests can pick from in case the initial "best time" doesn't work for them.
Continuing with the "tue, thu or fri at 10am" example, your guest(s) will see two additional choices organized in a box that they can choose from, assuming that "tue at 10am" is chosen to be the initial "best time" for the event.
This is much easier explained if I can send you a screenshot of what the guest sees. If you write into service@presdo.com with your email address, I'd be happy to send you a screenshot. :)
