Using TimeBridge

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Well, I’ve been using TimeBridge for some time now. And I’d like to let you know what I think about it.

As I said, TimeBridge really fills the gaps that Outlook (2003) has. For instance, being able to propose options for a meeting to a group of people is great.

TimeBridge’s user interface is wonderfully designed. Very intuitive, you can get to work right away. I also like the workflow approach to making an meeting(request). The user interface takes you through a couple of basic steps in a helpful way. Selecting options in your agenda and the people you want to invite is easy too. And I love the feature that the people you invite can say if the option is ‘best’, ‘ok’ or ‘not possible’. A meeting proposal in Outlook is all or nothing, accept or decline. And people hate to decline, but it looks like there not cooperative. Oh, yes, you can ‘propose a different date/time’, but you’re not the person setting up the meeting right?

But then comes the part I’m not quite satisfied with. When you select your options you’d like to look in your Outlook Calender and see what timeslots are open. This is not possible (yet?). You can import your Outlook Calender to TimeBridge, but I don’t want to do that. Outlook is my main Calender, not TimeBridge. Even from the Outlook plugin you can’t look in Outlook.

Well, OK, say we take this for granted and just flip between Outlook and the TimeBridge website to check for open slots. Then, still, there’s another thing I don’t like. What’s the problem? Ok, you’ve sent out your meeting proposal and get back replies from the people you want to meet with. Then you choose the best option. This option is sent to all invitees. I was thinking that the meeting was now also put in Outlook or could easily be put in Outlook via a sync feature. But you can’t. You have to download an ical file, open this file and it’s in your Outlook Calender. I find this too difficult.

Hopefully the people at TimeBridge will add the feature I miss.

Anyway, I’m enthusiastic about this tool. As I said before, this should be standard functionility in Outlook (and every Calender tool). And I hope it will be soon. With TimeBridge leading the way.

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