Help with Meet-O-Matic

Help for Step 1: Selecting dates

Select all relevant dates from the coarse-grained 2-month calendar view and then press the 'go' button near the upper right-hand corner of the page to go to step 2 (email participants). You can add additional months if necessary: every time you click on 'Add 2 months' the calendar is extended by a futher two months (don't worry... when your invited recipients see the actual response form they will only see the relevant months displayed).

The monthly 'day' view is the most effective for long-range planning, and for meetings where you intend to specify a time or range of times in your email message at step 2 (e.g. "We need to plan the Mountaineering Club's next evening Pub get-together... let's home in on a possible date...").

If you prefer to distinguish between AM and PM, then click on 'AM/PM' on the right-hand side of the calendar, and the view will be changed so that every date shows two separate check-boxes: left hand side for AM and right hand side for PM. This medium-grained view is the most effective for quickly converging on possible meeting opportunities.

Meet-O-Matic generates a custom web page which all of your participants can use to enter their own available dates and times with a few mouse clicks.

Tip: click on 'Select All Weekdays' to see the Monday-Friday dates pre-selected (or converesely 'Unselect All Weekdays' to clear them all)

The fields on the date-selection page have the following significance:

'Meeting name': This is the best way to ensure that when participants respond to your request they can see at a glance what the meeting is about. It also helps you later on, when you track responses, to distinguish among different meetings.

'My name': Like the meeting name described above, this is another item used just for internal book-keeping, and as a way politely to inform meeting invitees about who the meeting proposer is!

'My email': Meet-O-Matic will email you with the Web address information you need to track the progress of responses, and also email you every time a fresh individual response has been received, i.e. whenever someone fills in and submits the response form. (Note: we hate spam, and we can personally guarantee that your email addresses will never used anywhere else by Meetomatic, and that it is our firm policy never to distribute email addresses for any purpose whatsoever. See our privacy statement.)

Help for Step 2: Sending email to participants

At step 2, you'll see a screen containing a message similar to this:
"Now you should invite participants by forwarding the email which has just been sent to you, and which points them to your custom calendar response page:
http://www.meetomatic.com/respond.asp?id=xxxxxx "

Meet-O-Matic will accordingly have sent you a sample email, which you can simply forward (perhaps with some appropriate personalisation and editing, at your own discretion) to those you would like to invite to the meeting, or alternatively you can copy and then paste that meeting Web address (URL) into an entirely original email message, and then send email to participants as you would normally -- in either case you will be using your own preferred email software and address books or mailing lists. You can use your mouse to highlight the URL provided at Step 2 (the one in the example above which looks like this:
http://www.meetomatic.com/respond.asp?id=xxxxxx ), and then just use the Edit menu at the top of your browser and email system, selecting 'copy' or 'paste' as appropriate to transfer that wording into your own email. Alternatively, you can right-mouse-click directly on the URL and select the option 'Copy Shortcut', which will have the same effect as copying the highlighted text.

The key thing is that the meeting is initiated by you rather than a software tool, and your personal email message provides whatever background context and relevant information you decide is appropriate. Participants can then visit the custom Meet-O-Matic web page either by copying the meeting Web address (URL) from the email message and pasting it into their browser, or by clicking directly on the meeting Web address (URL) in the email message itself, as most modern email systems allow users to do this.

Help for Step 3: Monitoring progress

The originator of a meeting has a privileged ability to monitor the progress of the meeting, using another custom web page generated by Meet-O-Matic (you will be reminded of the page by email when you first propose the meeting, and again when individual respondents fill in their response forms). On the responses page, you will see a grid of participants vs. dates, with ticks ('checks') and crosses ('X's) showing good and bad dates for individuals. You can fill in dates/times on behalf of individuals who didn't or couldn't respond to your original request, simply by going back to the original response page (this is the Web address that you emailed to participants at Step 2) and filling the form in on their behalf! Meet-O-Matic always shows you the 'best fit', but you are always free to resolve the constraints according to your own preferences, and email the chosen solution to the participants. As the meeting proposer, you can also click on the name of any individual respondent shown in the monitoring page and edit the response form on their behalf (e.g. if they have phoned in or emailed with a change of plan).

Best dates and VIP analysis

On the responses page, Meet-O-Matic indicates the best dates at the bottom of the response table in a row labelled 'Rank'. It also provides a 'VIP?' (Very Important Person) option so that the proposer can refresh the best date analysis after indicating specific VIPs (i.e. those who really really need to be at the meeting). Just select ('check') the box next to the relevant names, and then press the 'Refresh best dates' button at the bottom of the page. You can specify how many of the best N dates you want rank-ordered at the bottom of the table (e.g. specifying 4 will tell Meet-O-Matic to indicate the rank orderings for the best 4 dates).