Cool Tools: Doodling your way to Event Efficiency

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  I'd like to hear about yours.  Meanwhile, here's are two simple, but ever so handy, computer utilities that I use regularly and wanted to pass on to you.

Today’s Cool Tool is one I’ve been using to help schedule events such as meetings for about 3 years, and it has been a huge time saver and convenience, not only for myself but for many others whom I have had the privilege to work with around the world on committees, working groups, project teams, and the like. 

It goes by the simple (though not very descriptive) name of Doodle and it is created by a Swiss-based company Doodle AG.

As with most of the things that make it to my Cool Tools list, Doodle is a marvel in simplicity and simply enables you to easily conduct an online poll.  As their site puts it, Doodle involves 3 steps:

Create a poll.

Forward the poll's link to the participants.

Follow online what the participants vote for.

In particular, I use it the most for its original purpose, which is to find the time and day that will work best for the majority of a group of people to meet. As many of you may have experienced, this simple sounding task can become an amazingly long and arduous one as you struggle to find a single time and date that will work for a group of typically very busy people who are often in very different time zones, jobs, etc.  

Using Doodle, meeting organizers can:

1. Create a list of potential dates and times for meetings.
2. Create an online poll with each of these as choices.
3. Generate a unique URL where each potential attendee can indicate which ones they can attend (green) or cannot attend (red). The participant simply checks the square for each choice. 
4. Receive an e-mail letting them know a member's choices.

Anyone who has the URL can see a tally of the voting at any time. 

Doodle keeps tabs on the results as they come in and indicates which days and times are currently the best choice for the meeting based on those who have provided their input at that time. You can see which dates/times work for each individual so if there are some who must absolutely attend you can be sure to choose those times that work for these individuals.

In addition to polls that help find the best meeting time, you can use Doodle to create polls for anything you like, such as choosing a restaurant for an upcoming group dinner, helping to reach consensus by voting on a list of choices, and anything else where you want to provide a quick and easy way for a group of people to provide their input.

The developers have also recently added some features that I’ve long been waiting for, such as “My Doodle” which provides me with a dynamically updated list of all the ongoing polls I have going at any time.  Before this feature was added, I had to keep track of all these different and rather arcane URLs. Now  Doodle does this automatically and the ongoing polls are listed in the My Doodle page. However, to use this feature, you must complete their free registration. 

They have also recently added a PowerDoodle set of features that include:

The ability to conduct hidden polls that hide the results from the participants

A very useful Yes-No-IfNeedBe poll that adds a yellow “if everything else fails” option to the standard green/red yes/no options

Polls that span different time zones and automatically calculate the right time for each participant’s time zone.  How many such meetings have YOU missed by being too early or too late because of time zone miscalculations?

Doodle currently works in 19 languages, including Esperanto, and it works very well for globally dispersed teams and groups, as I can attest. Just do some simple math to figure out the total amount of time and money that can be saved by a group of say, 20 attendees, or even more by the organizer.

And don’t limit your thinking about applications for Doodle to “just” your work-related events and polls. Consider the value of using this for scheduling family events, reunions, quick polls on the best movie to see, book to read, etc.  It’s free, it’s simple, it works, and it’s this week’s Cool Tool, so be sure to give it a test run to see how well it might work for you.  Let us know what you think and how you use it if it is cool to you too. And if this posting reminds you of one of your own Cool Tools, I hope you'll share it with the rest of us here at OCOT.

***********

Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

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