Arrangr's group meeting polls can save loads of time when you're trying to coordinate between multiple people's schedules to find the best time (and maybe the best location or call method) to hold a group meeting. Here are some tips and tricks that can help you get the most out of Arrangr's polls:
Use a more nuanced scale
Sometimes you might want to keep things super simple for your recipients, and just giving them a "Yes/No" option for each time can help accomplish this. However, often when these are the only two options, recipients won't be entirely honest about their availability, or they won't be able to differentiate between times that are good for them vs times that they could make work. Arrangr's "Great / OK / Maybe Not / Nope" scale can capture these nuances, and tends to lead to a greater chance of finding the best time for your group.
Save time with Arrangr's auto-recommendation
As the results come in, Arrangr will highlight what appears to be the best option so far, and will give a summary of the group's responses for that time. This can help save you time when you are too busy to parse through all the data yourself, and just want to lock in the time and move on.
Or get in the weeds with our full breakdown
We get it, sometimes you want to comb through the results yourself to hand-select the best option based on factors that only you know. We make this easy with our full results breakdown. You can see a tally of how many Yes’s & No’s or Oks/Greats/Maybes/Nos for each time you proposed, and you can also see each individual person’s response for each individual time.
Check your schedule as you take the poll
No need to jump over to your calendar, then back to the poll to see if you are available for the times proposed. Arrangr will automatically show you colored dots indicating if you have conflicts or near-conflicts on your calendar for each time. And, if you click on any time while taking the poll, Arrangr will show you your schedule for that day so you can quickly see what you have going on and easily determine how to respond for that time.
Poll for specific meeting times, or suggest time ranges
Sometimes it can be simplest to just list specific meeting times, and get the group's availability for each one. Like Friday at 2pm, Friday at 3pm, or Monday at 11am. Other times, it can be easier to just highlight some large blocks of time to find a time to meet somewhere inside one of those blocks. Like, let's meet for 30 minutes somewhere between 11am-3pm on Monday, or 9am-12pm on Wednesday. With Arrangr's Pro plan, you have the freedom to pick either format for your poll, while our free plan lets you poll on specific meeting times.
Taking poll with specific meeting times:
Taking poll with time ranges:
Get calendar placeholders for poll times
If your calendar is linked to your Arrangr account, when you take a poll you'll see an option to "put placeholders in my linked calendar". If you select this, then tentative events will get placed in your calendar for all the times you marked as available. Once the meeting is finalized, the final meeting details will be fed into your calendar, and all the tentative placeholders for other times will disappear.
Poll for the best time and best place or call method simultaneously
You can suggest multiple places, multiple call methods, or places and call methods, and have your participants rate their availability/preference for each time-place combination.
Enter your recipients' timezones
Save yourself some mental math. If you enter recipients' timezones, then as you select times we'll also show you the time in their timezones, making it easier for you to avoid times that aren't reasonable based on geography. Of course, if your recipients are already Arrangr users, Arrangr will already know their timezones so you won't have to set it yourself. Also, if you don't set your recipient's timezone, Arrangr will still recognize their timezone when they open the poll, so Arrangr will still display it to them in their local time (and give them the option to change what timezone it is displayed in).
Encourage recipients to join Arrangr
There is absolutely no need for your recipients to have Arrangr accounts, and the process will still be very smooth if they don't. However, it can lead to a more seamless and automated process if they are Arrangr users. When you select times to propose, you will be able to see the busy times of your recipients if they have linked a "busy" calendar. It will also allow them to view their schedule as they take the poll, have tentative placeholders put in their calendar, and will let Arrangr automatically insert the event in their linked calendar when the meeting is scheduled.