Lightweight Scheduling With Doodle

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Doodle is one of the few online scheduling services that I find worthwhile. The web interface is straightforward and minimalist. Most scheduling applications add enough overhead and complexity that I fall back to scheduling via email. The problem is that inevitably the email results in a flurry of back and forth negotiation that makes me wish I never tried to schedule the event in the first place. The planning process is even more difficult when participants from different organizations do not have access to common scheduling applications.

There are two types of polls in Doodle, one to schedule events and one to present a series of choices. You start the scheduling process by creating a poll with potential dates and times and decide whether you want to send a link to the poll yourself or have Doodle send out the email. Participants open the URL for the poll and simply select check boxes with their desired day and time combinations. Choice-based polls display a simple list of selections. Participants may also add comments or files to both types of polls. It really takes longer to describe the process than it does to complete it. The service is free and ad supported, although some features require paid premium accounts.

Options for Doodle polls include limiting the number of selections for each participant, enabling “if need be” time slots, limiting comments or changes to responses, and support for time zones. Paid premium accounts are $28 a year without ads and include features such as hiding responses, requiring additional information such as email or phone numbers, avatars, and support for custom designs. Doodle corporate accounts called Branded Doodle start at $240 a year for custom corporate branding without ads. Additional corporate options are response tracking and the ability to request additional information for $240 a year, and additional security and SSL access for $240 a year.

Doodle supports direct integration with Google Calendar and provides calendar feeds for use with Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, Microsoft Live Calendar, Apple iCal, Outlook and others. Doodle provides calendar plugins for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. Registration is required for calendar integration. Polls may be exported to PDF, Excel, or .ics calendar files.

Doodle is available as a widget on iGoogle, as an application on Facebook, as a mobile web application, and as a $2.99 iPhone application. The iPhone application is well done and is integrated with the iPhone address book. However, due to restrictions on the iPhone OS, it cannot integrate directly with the calendar application on the iPhone. The workaround is to simply subscribe to the Doodle calendar feed from the iPhone application.

Overall, I highly recommend Doodle for simple meeting scheduling. The one feature I wish Doodle would add is support for multiple email addresses. This would take the guesswork out selecting the right email address for people with more than one address. People scheduling events with complicated requirements such as matching meetings rooms with specific audio visual configurations to particular time slots will want to stick to traditional corporate scheduling applications. For everyday use, I find Doodle to be the right balance of functionality and simplicity.