Meet with Approval gets my seal of approval Friday, May 09, 2008
Image via WikipediaThe welcome page to "Meet with Approval" underwhelmed me, but after trying this meeting scheduler service out I confess to quickly upgrading my opinion of the site.It has deliberately been kept simple and free of gimmicks, as a consequence of which I anticipate adoption rates will be high, provided people don't mind paying $30 for a year's subscription to arrange unlimited meetings via the service, after using up their two free attempts.
The site uses a simple form to capture meeting information in text form from the organiser, allowing them to specify multiple dates/times options for the proposed meeting from which invitees can signify their availability.
Invites are sent via the service and email address may be manually entered or imported from a range of services/locations like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo which is catered for [most sensibly] via Plaxo's address book widget.
You can also send reminders to non-respondents, a process which has to be manually initiated within the site.
Once responses are in, the organiser confirms a meeting slot and all invitees notified automatically.
Pros
- very simple to use
- suitable for meetings involving many people
- allows people to indicate all the times they can attend
- highlights most popular meeting time automatically
- attendees may leave comments
- paid-for service includes ability to apply your own corporate branding
- subscription cost is trivial
- excellent log-in, which avoids passwords and simply asks you to provide the answer to a memorable question you determined at sign-up
Cons
- Meeting Duration is shown in the comments to the meeting
- Comments are the only way for invitees to suggest alternate dates/availability
- Unfriendly error messages
Unlike Timebridge which limits you to 5 time slots, I didn't hit a restriction on the number of time slots that could be offered to invitees.
Just to note, in testing I did hit "Runtime Error" screens when I attempted to cancel a meeting, which would scare unsophisticated users. However, this is an early version of the service and I hope such wrinkles will be attended to quickly.
Overall, it is simpler to use than Timetomeet, a free alternative, and the use of a list of options rather than a calendar display that needs to be scrolled through, will certainly be easier for most people to immediately comprehend. In my [painful] experience, when presented with a calendar view on these types of service, many people fail to appreciate that they need to scroll through the displayed weeks as some options offered may be out of sight. In contrast, a list view shows them all options in a concise and complete fashion.
Labels: gmail, meeting, Microsoft Outlook, plaxo, Timebridge, Timetomeet
posted by John Wilson @ 8:42 AM Permanent Link
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Plaxo Address Book widget is a win-win scenario Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Many people have described Plaxo as an annoying service. These criticisms have been levelled not because of what it's designed to do but simply because of the annoying volume of emails you can get hit with as a by-product of others using it.
Plaxo is actually a great idea. Essentially everyone maintains their own address details and then you subscribe to your friends/contacts details. This reduces everyone's address book maintenance effort and should avoid details becoming obsolete. It's definitely the case that my own address book is littered with out-dated details for people, but I simply don't know which ones are wrong until I go to try them. It would be very handy if these details were automatically updated.
Unfortunately, this means your contacts also have to buy in to the concept and use the service.
When you initially upload up your address book, Plaxo tells you which people are already subscribed to Plaxo based on the details you provided and which are not. It suggests you contact this latter category and invite them to join the service because that will make your life easier. Of course, this seems such an excellent idea that you initiate email invites via the service.
Some of your friends ignore the email for a variety of reasons including inertia but also because they see the benefit to you but not to themselves. However some others choose to sign-up and follow the same procedure.
Unfortunately, it's probable that there will be some overlap of address books with the result that some people are likely to be invited to sign-up again and again. Whilst Plaxo aren't causing this (it's your own popularity and stubborness to succumb to the invite) they are a beneficiary of the "virus".
Plaxo isn't unique in operating an "invite a friend" feature but they are rare in that you actually need your friends to join Plaxo if you are to derive benefit from it e.g. it doesn't matter if my friends don't use Last.fm but it does matter if they don't use Plaxo as it defeats the point.
Ok, so Plaxo is old news to many. Well, I mention it because Plaxo have made available an excellent widget that other web sites can use. Called "Address Book Access", it allows users of your site to do a temporary upload of their address book(s) to your site for the purposes of sending email invites to their friends.
This avoids you having to develop this functionality for your own site, whilst satisfying your desire to make the invite process incredibly easy for your site visitors/users.
So, you may ask what's it in for Plaxo to be so nice. Well, it probably won't surprise you to learn that the routine is branded as Plaxo as well as containing a small marketing message inviting people to sign-up for Plaxo. Others will disagree and possibly direct me to other open sources facilities that do the same (please do), but I think this is an excellent trade for both web sites.
Labels: friends, invites, plaxo, social networks, widget
posted by John Wilson @ 8:23 AM Permanent Link
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