An Elegant App That Makes It Simple to Schedule Meetings and Events

Image: Doodle

Living with roommates on and off since high school, I’m all too familiar with how difficult it can be to schedule a meeting with multiple busy adults–particularly via email or text.

“Is everyone free Thursday at 6pm?”

“I can’t do 6, but I can do after 8.”

“Wednesday works better for me, I’ve got yoga on Thursdays.”

“Can we do Friday instead? But only before 5:30.”

End the back-and-forth confusion by starting the scheduling conversation with Doodle. Doodle is an iOS, Android, and web app that simplifies the entire process. One person takes charge and selects a handful of dates and times for a possible event. He or she then shares the Doodle link with others who reply with their name and the times they’re available. This results in a neat grid showing red boxes and green check-marked boxes for all the dates and times people are available, allowing you to select the option most of your invitees can make. Voila, meeting time decided.

When you create an event, you can give it a name, location, and enter other relevant details. You’ll need to supply an email address to manage it, but you don’t need a Doodle account to do this (and neither does anyone else you share the poll with). If you do sign up though, you can link up Doodle with your calendar of choice and have the event automatically uploaded. Creating an account also lets you manage multiple event polls simultaneously.

Doodle is a beautiful service because it is so simple. It’s incredibly straightforward to create an event, to share it, and to fill in your responses. I’ve been using it for about five years now, and unlike so many apps and sites that evolve into something huge and complicated over the years, it’s remained the same, easy-to-use, consistent site since day one. If you only have two or three people to coordinate with, sure, Google Calendar invites will suffice. But more than that, and Doodle will really save you time and headaches.