Hey guys, when people ask to schedule a meeting/interview/whatever, I've always found it hard to respond with a list of time availabilities.
I always tabbed back and forth between my Google calendar to construct a message that accurately listed my free time, but this was painful.
My site helps me do this small task, and I wanted to see if anyone else had this same problem, had some feedback for me, or if there were any other simple solutions and I've wasted my time building this crap.
Note: I've yet to have my app verified by Google, so if you wish to import your own Google calendar on to my site, the consent screen will look sketchy.
Found I have the same issue. Customer facing folks have it even worse.
As much as I love the solution what I really want is a cli that’ll spit out my meetings OR my free time.
I.e I could say:
cli --free 60m —today
And it would spit out the 60 minute chunks (in my time zone). Would love to copy paste that but not sure how hard it would be to do with the google api
Same here, I thought it'd be a productivity tool that would rapidly count down and make me aware "You only have this many seconds left budgeted for [_____]". I was looking for the "Go!" button I thought I'd have to click after adding at least 1 thing to the calendar.
Congrats on shipping! I've been thinking about building something similar to scratch my own itch. I think ideally it would generate availability for an arbitrary time span, e.g a week.
Also, I didn't end up trying it due to the sketchy consent screen you mentioned. Maybe there's a lower friction way to get someone's schedule, e.g. screenshot?
Thanks! Yeah, this definitely doesn't solve the group scheduling problem like when2meet does. I think its also a bit frustrating to tab back and forth between my Google calendar page and the when2meet event to fill it out, maybe they should integrate also!
On the topic of week starts, US calendars is funny because it starts on Sunday. European calendars start on Monday. In some Muslim countries they have Fridays, Saturdays off, and I guess they work again on Sunday. Welcome to dealing with time! I'm sure you've also read: https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-program... . I guess a logical option would be to have 2 options: "Start week on [Weekday]" (using a dropdown chooser) and "Show [n] days" (some people maybe want a 6-day week, and others just a 3-day one!).
I noticed the "Copy" button generates a copy-pastable text. I was half expecting an encoded URL that one could share with people, they'd open this URL in their browser and see what the user just entered. For me at least it's easier to see a graphical calendar rather than trying to parse entries like "Friday May 1, 8:00-10:00."
The data doesn't even have to be stored server-side, you could encode the times and generate a URL with a "#", which the app would then decode so it could render the calendar with the markings.
The article looks interesting, I'll have a read in a bit.
Also, the URL to send the encoded calendar is a great idea! I've thought about doing that before, but focused on just creating the message because I thought users would rather just get the text and be done with the site, but I think I'll implement it and see if people use it
I like this a lot (was actually thinking of building something similar)! Some feedback I have:
- When I log in with my Google account, my name is shown as undefined ("Hi, undefined!").
- It would be nice to quickly select/unselect all of my calendars (I have a lot, but only one I really need to use).
- It would be cool to select a date range and then ask it to spit out all availabilities based on my calendar without needing to manually select available times. Although I like the current opt-in way too. Just a thought, maybe no change is needed here.
1. What browser are you using? I haven't gotten that before, so interested to see whats causing that
2. I definitely want to add that as a feature soon.
3. And yeah I've seen another app calendar.management do that, but I've found opt-in to make more sense imo. Something to consider in the future though
1. Thank you for trying it out on those browsers - never thought someone would care enough to test it like this! Nonetheless, I really have no idea what's causing that.. I guess as long as the Google calendar events load in correctly its not a big deal?
I've seen you suggest time zones from all over the world, which is nice. But the AM/PM system is mostly an American thing, a 24-hour clock is more common elsewhere.
I suppose you can query the browser for the appropriate format to use like you are doing for the time zone.
Unlike the rest the Empire, the UK has been greatly influenced by Europe. Use of 24h clock, metric, and "football" instead of "soccer" are examples of this.
Yes that is definitely a feature I can add in. I don't think I gave the instruction anywhere but you can delete an availability by clicking on it also. That should help the clutter
- After placing a timeslot I went to drag it up and down. Instead it created another timeslot within the first one. Having used Google calendar a lot I kept subconsciously trying this: http://i.imgur.com/G9SlRAh.png
- Showing timezone is great but the dates are in the US MM/DD format. For everyone else this really throws us, especially when the date is ambiguous. DD/MM really should be the default outside the US. Also perhaps an option for the ISO YYYY-MM-DD format.
1. Yep, definitely an issue, I'm gonna try to have adjacent availabilities just combine into each other (also you can delete availabilities by clicking on them!)
2. I had not thought about that but that is something I'll fix soon also
I clicked on the site without reading your opening comments. It took me a couple of minutes to understand what the purpose is. I think I would not have given it that much time if it was not a Show HN. But then again its such a specialized tool that if someone finds it they will perhaps know how to use it. I don't know, maybe add a button somewhere for a simple explanation?
Also the title says "What time today?" but actually the default calendar which shows up is the work week. That seems like mixed messages. Here is something I think will be cool, make the "What time ______?" as a drop down. So it goes "what time this week/day/work week?" etc. Some people might find it cheesy though.
Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to go for simplicity/intuitiveness but I definitely was not successful haha. I may add a howto button or something like you suggest.
And the title idea is cool! I'll see if that could work
I certainly don't think you failed. Once I got what the purpose is, then its quite easy to understand the interface. I don't organize too many meetings, so I don't run into this problem too often.
Sorry for the late reply but for the sake of complete feedback I'll still post this. Yes I let them view my entire calendar but not in detail. So they can view when I'm busy and when I'm free but not which meeting it is.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadI always tabbed back and forth between my Google calendar to construct a message that accurately listed my free time, but this was painful.
My site helps me do this small task, and I wanted to see if anyone else had this same problem, had some feedback for me, or if there were any other simple solutions and I've wasted my time building this crap.
Note: I've yet to have my app verified by Google, so if you wish to import your own Google calendar on to my site, the consent screen will look sketchy.
As much as I love the solution what I really want is a cli that’ll spit out my meetings OR my free time.
I.e I could say: cli --free 60m —today
And it would spit out the 60 minute chunks (in my time zone). Would love to copy paste that but not sure how hard it would be to do with the google api
https://developers.google.com/calendar/v3/reference/freebusy...
Is it fairly straightforward to start making rest calls? I’d love to just hit that api
I'd like to add people to a meeting and choose the best time based on free slots on their calendar.
That's definitely ideal. Effectively when2meet integrated with Google Calendar. Might be down the pipeline if enough people interested
Also, I didn't end up trying it due to the sketchy consent screen you mentioned. Maybe there's a lower friction way to get someone's schedule, e.g. screenshot?
[0] https://www.when2meet.com/
Further possible enhancements:
- more timezones
- week starting on Monday
- hide weekend
- every generated time is a link to timeanddate/worldclock/something that can automatically convert it to other timezones
1. Added some more timezones, but not yet comprehensive I guess
2. Added work_week option for desktop
3. Same as 2
4. Maybe in the future? But I think my original goal was to avoid links so you can send self-contained availabilities in an email to someone
I noticed the "Copy" button generates a copy-pastable text. I was half expecting an encoded URL that one could share with people, they'd open this URL in their browser and see what the user just entered. For me at least it's easier to see a graphical calendar rather than trying to parse entries like "Friday May 1, 8:00-10:00."
The data doesn't even have to be stored server-side, you could encode the times and generate a URL with a "#", which the app would then decode so it could render the calendar with the markings.
Also, the URL to send the encoded calendar is a great idea! I've thought about doing that before, but focused on just creating the message because I thought users would rather just get the text and be done with the site, but I think I'll implement it and see if people use it
- When I log in with my Google account, my name is shown as undefined ("Hi, undefined!").
- It would be nice to quickly select/unselect all of my calendars (I have a lot, but only one I really need to use).
- It would be cool to select a date range and then ask it to spit out all availabilities based on my calendar without needing to manually select available times. Although I like the current opt-in way too. Just a thought, maybe no change is needed here.
1. What browser are you using? I haven't gotten that before, so interested to see whats causing that
2. I definitely want to add that as a feature soon.
3. And yeah I've seen another app calendar.management do that, but I've found opt-in to make more sense imo. Something to consider in the future though
2. I saw your other comment and yes, that fixes it!
2. Cool!
I've seen you suggest time zones from all over the world, which is nice. But the AM/PM system is mostly an American thing, a 24-hour clock is more common elsewhere.
I suppose you can query the browser for the appropriate format to use like you are doing for the time zone.
Couple of things:
- After placing a timeslot I went to drag it up and down. Instead it created another timeslot within the first one. Having used Google calendar a lot I kept subconsciously trying this: http://i.imgur.com/G9SlRAh.png
- Showing timezone is great but the dates are in the US MM/DD format. For everyone else this really throws us, especially when the date is ambiguous. DD/MM really should be the default outside the US. Also perhaps an option for the ISO YYYY-MM-DD format.
1. Yep, definitely an issue, I'm gonna try to have adjacent availabilities just combine into each other (also you can delete availabilities by clicking on them!)
2. I had not thought about that but that is something I'll fix soon also
By default, it suggests a date/time for today on "5/1", and there doesn't seem to be a toggle for that.
In most of the world, that's not the first of May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
Would it be possible to make the date format also a toggle or a cusomisable option?
Do you mean M/D vs D/M? I believe I've added that to the output formatting as another toggle
Also the title says "What time today?" but actually the default calendar which shows up is the work week. That seems like mixed messages. Here is something I think will be cool, make the "What time ______?" as a drop down. So it goes "what time this week/day/work week?" etc. Some people might find it cheesy though.
And the title idea is cool! I'll see if that could work
Constant pita
- Free - Out of Office - Busy - Busy, but I can definitely reschedule this for the right reason
As someone with a very active calendar I often tell people "My calendar is up to date, but for this I'm also available at x, y, z if it works for you"
But I guess that depends on incorporate who's asking and what they are asking for..