Many projects work across time zones so misunderstandings about time causes delays, especially in teleconferences.
Informal methods to set the meeting times take more effort than they are worth. It’s better to use meeting time tools, which depend on everybody keeping their calendar up-to-date. These tools read your calendar and convert the times to your time zone.
Here are a couple of tools which compare calendars, depending on what operating system you are using:
For Apple: Pick.co
For Gmail: Assistant.to
Here are some more where instead of comparing calendars they look at your calendar and then offer your availability and the other person selected by hand:
Infususionsoft
TimeTrade
Our favorite here is doodle. This is a free application, you can use it immediately, you don’t have to sign up and it converts for time zones, is suitable for team use and it’s accessible through a browser.
It’s also intuitive. But as with most tools: you have to do a little bit of work yourself:
When you have set up the meetings, it makes sense to then send out invitations to go into everybody’s calendars to make quite sure they got them. But it certainly does all the “donkey work”, all the hard work of converting time zones automatically for you.
So if you have any comments or queries about project issues, please do connect with me.
Thanks very much.
Dr. Deasún Ó Conchúir (pronounce) is a Collaboration Consultant at Scatterwork, which supports Project Solutions for Virtual Teams.
Email: deasun@gd.scatterwork.com
Tel: +41 79 692 4735 Talk to me
LinkedIn: Connect with me
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