A meeting scheduling tool that helps you focus

‍Our meeting scheduler can improve your team’s productivity and focus by improving your meeting etiquette, optimizing schedules across time zones, and streamlining scheduling. 

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• Manually scheduling and rescheduling is busywork
• A smart calendar assistant streamlines your scheduling, saving time and energy
• Clockwise takes your preferences, Focus Time, and everyone’s time zones into account when suggesting ideal times to meet
  

No one likes manually scheduled and rescheduling meetings. Well, maybe someone does. But most of us don’t enjoy finding a time, going back-and-forth with everyone you need to meet with, grabbing a room and/or setting up a Zoom, and then having to do it all over again when someone double-books. Add timezones, internal and external attendees, and meeting etiquette to the mix and that’s a lot of busywork. 

That’s why efficient teams are using Clockwise to schedule their meetings, optimize their calendars, and resolve conflicts automatically. Here’s how a smart meeting scheduler like Clockwise can help you schedule faster and smarter. 

How a meeting scheduling app can streamline scheduling teams

A scheduling assistant is the part of the calendar app that helps you find the best time to meet based on everyone’s availability. Most calendar software offers a scheduling assistant. But there are also standalone tools that integrate with your calendar to make scheduling even easier. 

One such tool is Clockwise. 

One of the worst parts of scheduling new meetings is knowing it’s going to eat into your and your colleagues’ Focus Time. A poorly scheduled meeting in the middle of a block of Focus Time can cost up to 40% of your productive time at work. Teams with more stretches of two or more hours for uninterrupted work get more done, faster and bring in higher revenues, on average. 

That’s why the Clockwise meeting scheduler suggests times to meet based on their potential productivity impacts. Clockwise automatically generates smart suggestions for when to meet based on more than ten factors, including:

• The timezone of every attendee
• Meeting preferences (eg: I prefer to meet in the morning)
• Work hours
• Focus Time cost (eg: will this meeting interrupt a block of free time that could be used for productive work)
• Meeting conflicts
• No meeting day
• Your ratings of meeting moves
• Meeting relief
• Travel time
• How soon you want to meet
• Preserving time for lunch
  

For time zones, Clockwise easily handles even the tricky ones, such as locations that either don't respect daylight savings or switch over on different days.

Another way Clockwise makes scheduling easier for teams: It shows you and your team when everyone is free. Easily sync your personal calendar so no one schedules over your personal events either. They show as “busy” with no details, for privacy.

Clockwise also integrates team calendars automatically so everyone knows when someone is OOO or on a holiday. Plus you get to each lunch more often as lunch holds appear automatically (based on your settings) so your teammates know when they’re scheduling over your midday break. 

Automatic conflict resolution and meeting rescheduling

Another pain point to scheduling meetings is dealing with calendar conflicts. It’s frustrating to spend time picking a time that actually works for everyone’s schedule, then have someone come along and schedule right over it! 

Clockwise solves this problem (without any effort on your part!) through our flexible meetings setting. When you make a meeting flexible, you allow Clockwise to find the best time for the meeting based on the ten-plus factors mentioned above. Then if someone schedules over it, no problem. Clockwise will just find the next-best time to meet based on all the same information. 

Meeting scheduling etiquette built-in

One of the biggest meeting etiquette mistakes we see people making is not factoring Focus Time into scheduling. Clockwise makes it easy to reduce the negative impact a new meeting has on your whole team’s Focus Time.

Another faux pas: Wasting time going back and forth scheduling and rescheduling. Clockwise also eliminates this busywork for you and your team. 

In addition, Clockwise makes it super simple for anyone to create and respect a No Meeting Day for your company or team. After you set up a team in Clockwise, just choose a day:

When someone at your organization tries to schedule a meeting on that day, Clockwise will automatically suggest a different day. Not only that, but our flexible meetings feature means Clockwise will suggest the least-interruptive time available automatically.

Easily split your working hours

Clockwise also offers another win for team scheduling: You can set flexible working hours in Clockwise to better support your and your team’s scheduling priorities. When you set your working hours in Clockwise, you now have the option to split your hours across the day or week.

This makes it easier for you to protect your time for non-negotiables and personal commitments, regardless of when you want to work. Now, you can add, remove, and update any working hour block as needed. Plus, copying your preferred daily schedule across the week takes just one click. To start flexing your working hours, check out our getting started guide or just head to your settings.

How to use Clockwise for smarter scheduling

To schedule your next meeting with the Clockwise, first download Clockwise if you haven’t already.

After onboarding, click the “Schedule Meeting” button from the Clockwise sidebar on your work calendar.

Then, add attendees by typing the email addresses (internal or external) of the people you would like to meet with where it says “Add Attendees.”

The scheduling assistant will show you the "Best Time" and the "First Available" time to meet. You can see more times under "View more available times."

Clockwise will tell you how much Focus Time each meeting will cost at each available time, so you know why certain times are better than others at a glance. 

If you choose “Find the Best Time,” Clockwise will automatically select the time that preserves the most Focus Time that also meets your duration and time and date range preferences. Clockwise won’t automatically schedule the meeting. You’ll still need to confirm the selected time.

Note: By default, meetings scheduled with "Find the Best Time" are flexible, and might move around within the day to open up more Focus Time.

Whichever time you choose, click on it and add your meeting details. Then to book, just click "Schedule," and Clockwise will book your meeting and send out your invitations.

Going forward

Scheduling and rescheduling manually is busywork that wastes your time and your teammates’ time. Scheduling with a smart calendar assistant like Clockwise streamlines your scheduling, saving you and your team time and energy. Clockwise suggests times to meet that factor in the preferences, Focus Time, and time zones of everyone involved into account. It automatically resolves conflicts, helps you schedule more considerately, and makes it easy to split your working hours.