"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save." Mark Twain

Time is a human construct, yet it is often the master of many of us. Time is critical in collaboration, in that tasks, events or meetings are scheduled

Time is a human construct, yet it is often the master of many of us. Time is critical in collaboration, in that tasks, events or meetings are scheduled and must be coordinated to support collaboration. Yet, how many times has it taken 12 different e-mails to set up a simple meeting or conference call with 3-4 people. Time coordination is the death of a thousand cuts. It is such a difficult (or wicked) problem that no one to my knowledge has come up with a great solution. But there are a number of Web 2.0 firms working on this problem.

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About a year ago in this blog I talked about TimeBridge, who had just gone beta. When we tested TimeBridge the problem we had was getting anyone to respond to the meeting invitation. Now maybe it was because I invited other CS analyst to a meeting, and they were too busy to reply. Come to think of it, one analyst never even responds to my e-mails. So we could never complete the process of having TimeBridge scheduling. We also had a few issues with TimeBridge and Outlook, but that is to be expected from Beta software.

Recently, we had a briefing from Volutio on their newly named tool ikordo (formerly codenamed Meeting Agent). iKordo (where do they get these names?) doesn’t require a download and communicates with invitees via e-mail. An organizer visits the ikordo site to plan a meeting, and doesn’t require the invitees to change their current process in any way (which seemed to be some of the problem with TimeBridge). Invitees send e-mail responses allowing ikordo to build an availability calendar. Once replies are received, ikordo will find a time suitable for all invitees and schedule the meeting.

Altough iKordo is not out yet, I see the same problem here as with TimeBridge… what if someone does not reply? What if one of the people that had not replied is critical to the meeting? Will ikordo schedule the meeting anyway? Is there a way to designate critical and non-critical people?

Further Discussion

In talking to George Waidell, Vice President, Product Strategy
Volutio Ltd. I did get some answers to the above questions.

Accordig to George "ikordo does have a few levels of logic regarding an invitee’s status. Critical and Required statuses all must agree on a time to attend the meeting, but the planning process won’t include Required until a time has been decided by the Critical attendees. The concept here is that a Critical invitee may have a tougher schedule and there is no sense in sending multiple times to other attendees if there are 1 or 2 that may be troublesome to find an available time. ikordo gathers the critical times first, then finds a match by inquiring the Required attendees for these specific time slots. Optional and Notify Only statuses are also available.

Furthermore, we have reminder logic build into the system to ping unresponsive invitees. We will also notify an organizer if there are unresponsive attendees. A final option is that ikordo will allow the organizer to add availability of an invitee on the website. The process can then mimic the real world, so when an organizer doesn’t hear from an invitee via e-mail they will likely pick-up the phone and call that person. Gaining the availability of that invitee over the phone, the organizer can add the invitee availability to the scheduling in-process and ikordo continues to schedule the meeting using the new information and the information already collected from other invitees.

This communication method provides the flexibility of sending a response from any e-mail capable device even allowing a meeting to be planned when a user is away from their primary workstation via blackberry, remote access, or web mail. Furthermore, ikordo takes the viewpoint that an invitee may not have an updated calendar or want to restrict or reserve portions of their availability. Ikordo process will allow an invitee to share as much or as little details with an organizer as desired. This also gives the invitee the ability to share different availabilities with different organizers. For example, an invitee may give a wide range of availability to meet with their CEO, but a minimal number of times to meet with an outside salesperson."

Under The Radar

At the Under the Radar conference last week, Tungle announced its solution. Tungle is described as a plug-in that integrates with Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Google Calendar. The plug-in allows users to add people to their ‘buddy’ list and share calendar information; I was not sure from the demo if it requires those users (buddies) to also download the plug-in, but if it is able to show their calendar data on one common calendar it must be through an installed plug in. Inviting attendees to join a meeting provides a shared calendar of their availability and allows the organizer to pick a meeting time or let the software find the next available time slot (Tungle Wizard).

I believe Tungle’s biggest strengths may be thiir use of P2P communications so that no shared availability is placed on a server (helps with security), although they do state that they do use e-mail as the messaging transport.

Another strength is allowing users to maintain their current calendar provided it is one of the three mentioned. Both Tungle and Volutio agree that the standard shared calendar doesn’t work and something better needs to be done. After all it is a wicked problem!

Other Tools

There also were also some another tools at Under the Radar Show that deal with time, calendaring and scheduling. One is called Calgoo, the Java-based application that syncs up your online and offline calendars (beta) and now is a public download. With the update comes support for iCal, Microsoft Outlook, and both tiers of Google Applications (free and premiere). It's also undergone a face-lift that makes look like a crooss between Apple's iCal married to Microsoft's Outlook. Calgoo does require a small download, but what's nice is that you can create appointments and schedule your Google Calendar without going online. The next time you're able to connect, Calgoo will sync up your changes.

Another tool that was demonstrated is called Sandy and is the new e-mail assistant from the team that makes Stikkit. You cc: "Sandy," the e-mail bot, on your correspondence, and the agent will decipher what you're saying, like "let's have lunch tomorrow," and put the right information in your calendar. When I went to the web site (Iwantsandy.com) I was not able to get any more information or see a demo (sounds like they are still in early Beta). One can only hope it works as advertised.

Time Enough

What all of these tools have in common is that they are Web 2.0 potential solutions for specific wicked time coordination problems. They all boast simplicity, easy to install, and some even claim that you don’t have to change your process for setting up a meeting through e-mail. However, all those that I have tested have failed to deliver this meeting coordination nirvana. Ikordo is due out soon, and I have been promised access to an early beta by Volutio, and I look forward to testing that tool and letting you know the results.