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How to make sure your meeting requests make it to attendees' calendars.

Let's face it.  We're all inundated with email and tend to neglect any info not in the first paragraph.  We quickly extract what info we need and move on to the next email.  Fine, except this makes us error prone, especially in instances where we use something like "Tuesday the 25th," when in reality it should be "Thursday the 25th."  Some people will gravitate to the day name while others the calendar date.  Oops!

Here's a tip to avoid these errors.  This is not only aimed at readability but also takes advantage of the features in many calendaring apps to extract meeting details.

Don't use inline meeting times where the info is embedded within a sentence.  Here's an example of bad formatting:

"Let's get together at 2 on Wednesday the 18th to talk about the budget."

At quick glance the details are not easily extracted.  Change the formatting and the info is readily presented.  Here's an example of good formatting:

Topic: Budget
Date:  Wed. 3/18
Time:  2pm

This format stands out within the email permitting eyes to gravitate to it.  And the line-by-line usage makes each detail available for quick referral.

While readability is gained what's more important is email applications can extract this info and ask, "Would you like to add this appointment to your calendar?"  Gmail is well known for doing this, as well as Outlook.  One click and the title, date, and time are all added to your calendar.  No more excuses that someone entered the wrong date or time.

Larger organizations burdened trying to find meeting times mutually agreeable to 20+ people should consider applications using "Free/Busy Calendaring," such as Exchange/Outlook.  Each participating employee can make their calendar visible so others others know if they're "free" or "busy."  This doesn't make what's scheduled on your calendar visible, just the fact that something is already scheduled for you.  Now when someone plans a meeting they can collectively see who's available and when and eliminate the dozen-plus follow emails from others stating their unavailability.  This alone could save your small/medium business 5+ staff hours per week!  Talk about Return on Investment (ROI).

If the latter interests you we recommend Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite which includes a hosted version of Exchange for your email and calendaring.  Ask us for a free trial and tour if you think this would benefit your small/medium business.