Organise meetings and events more easily with Sheduleonce

We’re going to arrange a reunion dinner with some friends. To keep it easy to follow, we are going to keep the invite list to three, but that will still be enough to explain how the process works. Start by launching a web browser and visit to the Scheduleonce website. When the page appears, click the Schedule Meeting button to get started. The site displays a Quick Tip box – read the contents and click Close. You will see a blank calendar on the screen.

If you use Google Calendar, it can be linked to Scheduleonce but for now we’ll keep things simple. If you would like to link Scheduleonce to Google Calendar straight away, skip to Step 10. Otherwise, move the mouse pointer over the calendar window and it will turn into a marker pen. Now click and hold down the left mouse button and drag to mark a section of time in the calendar when you would like the dinner to take place. Repeat to mark several timeslots.

Fill in the rest of the details in the panel on the left – the duration of the meeting, together with a descriptive name for the meeting and your email address, and then click the Save button. Scheduleonce saves the proposed meeting times and then displays the Invitee link dialogue box: left-click on the link to highlight it and then hold down the Ctrl (Control) key and press C to copy it to the Windows Clipboard. Put a tick next to the ‘I am sending the link’ option and then click the Close button to continue.

Now launch your email program, create a new message and then add the addresses of the people to be invited to the dinner. Give the message a subject and then click in the body of the email and type a message like: ‘Hi guys, I’ve proposed a few times for us to get together – click the link to let me know your availability’. Press Enter a couple of times, then right-click and choose Paste from the pop-up menu to paste the link into the message body. Send the email.

We’re going to switch identities and pretend to be one of the invitees. As such, we have now received an email message inviting us to the reunion dinner. We open the email and click on the link it contains. This opens a new browser window together with a little tips window on top of it – click the Close button to remove it. Now we can see the three times that have been proposed for the meeting highlighted in green.

The invitee must type their name into the empty box and then use the mouse pointer to flag the times that they can make. In this example we are going to say we can make the Wednesday and Friday lunchtimes but not the Thursday one. The screen now shows that we have added our availability and all that’s left is to fill in our email address and then leave a comment (this is optional) and click the Submit button to add our details and continue.

Scheduleonce asks for the submission to be confirmed – click the Submit button and then sit back and wait. For the purposes of this workshop, we are now going to pretend that we are also the third person who is supposed to be going to this dinner. So, again we load our email program, open the invitation and click the link. When the new browser window opens we can get rid of the Scheduleonce tip box by clicking Close and then fill in our availability as we did in Step 6. At the next dialogue box, click Confirm to continue.

As people respond to the reunion invitation, Scheduleonce sends an email to the person who set it up in the first place (see Step 2). They open the message and click the link and this returns them to the Scheduleonce website, where they can see who has responded and what free times are available. When the site opens, notice that it has looked at the proposed times, factored in the availability of the three different people and highlighted the available time slot. Scheduleonce puts the date and time of the meeting into the text box – highlight what’s there and then hold down the Ctrl key and press C to copy it into the Clipboard.

Now switch back to your email program and then create a new message to both invitees confirming the date and time. Paste the information from the Clipboard into the body of the message, using the Ctrl and V keyboard shortcut. And that’s it – everyone’s organised and coming to the dinner. ▼

Google Calendar users can integrate their diaries with Scheduleonce. Here, for example, we are about to organise a get-together, as we did in Step 1. But this time, we’re going to ‘tell’ Scheduleonce about our Google Calendar. So, instead of drawing out the proposed meetings straight onto the calendar with the mouse pointer, we’re going to have a look at our existing appointments first by clicking the ‘Connect your Google Calendar’ button. Internet Explorer users are advised to first go through the remaining steps of this workshop, as extra work is required that could dissuade you from bothering.

This opens a new browser window with a prompt to sign in to your Google account. This will be followed by a message saying that Scheduleonce wants to access your Google account – click the Grant access button to continue. The Scheduleonce calendar screen will reappear, except this time it also displays the contents of your Google Calendar. Now proceed as before to create the get-together for your group.

It is possible to download a Scheduleonce widget to make integration with Google Calendar even better. If you are using the Firefox or Chrome web browsers this is really easy, though Internet Explorer users face an extra step – see the next paragraph. Visit www.scheduleonce.com and then click the Add-ons button. When the screen loads you will see a table of add-ons – the Google Calendar Widget is at the top. Click the Install button.

Working with Internet Explorer
To use Scheduleonce’s Google Calender widget in Internet Explorer you will first have to download a free tool called IE7pro. Follow Step 12 and when you do, Scheduleonce will recognise that Internet Explorer is running and display a new screen with instructions for downloading and installing IE7pro, the utility that’s required to make Internet Explorer work properly with the Scheduleonce widgets. Follow the instructions to install that, then install the widget. Once installed it works the same as described in the main workshop. Despite its name, IE7Pro is required and should work in both Internet Explorer 8 and 9 – though we have not tested it extensively in IE9.

After a moment the Software Installation dialogue will appear. Click the Install Now button to continue. When the Add-ons dialogue box appears in Firefox, click the Restart Firefox button. Now, when you log back into your Google Calendar an entry for Scheduleonce will appear in the left-hand panel. If you have already created a shared meeting, there will be a plus (‘+’) sign next to the Scheduleonce heading – click it and to see the meetings you’ve created.

From now on, you will be able to create Scheduleonce appointments from within Google Calendar: click the New Meeting link in the panel on the left and Scheduleonce will display a calendar in a new browser window with your existing Google Calendar appointments already displayed. Need to know more? Click the Help link in the panel on the left.