If you have ever been tasked with organising a company corporate away day, team building activities, or any other kind of event for that matter, you will no doubt appreciate how difficult it can be trying to get everyone in one place at the same time! On more than one occasion we have heard clients use the expression “herding cats” when trying to organise a suitable date with their colleagues.
We know it can be an absolute nightmare trying to find a time and/or date when everyone is available, and inevitably as soon as you think you have a date nailed down, you receive an influx of late responses from people, all of which can’t make your intended date!
Sadly, there isn’t much we can do about busy schedules BUT we have discovered a brilliant tool which will defiantly make the whole process of establishing people’s availability and preferred dates for an event a whole lot easier.
Welcome to Doodle!
You may have already heard about Doodle, but if you haven’t, and you’re involved in organising events, meetings, or even trying to establish which corporate hospitality events your valued client might want to attend, you are certainly missing a trick.
In their own words, “Doodle radically simplifies the process of scheduling events”. The first step in your Doodle journey starts with creating an event. At this stage you can add all of the information that the attendees will need in order to make an informed decision, such as the title of the event, location, and event description. After this you can then add your potential dates and times for people to vote on.
When you have finished and your event has been created, simply select the people you want to take part in the poll (this can be done directly from your address book or simply added manually), and click send. Doodle will then send all of your selected invitees an email asking them to take part in the poll – all they have to do is click on a link, select their preferred dates/times, and submit their choices. Simple!
As the “Event Admin” you will be able to see how people have responded and also which date is the best in terms of availability. Once the poll has finished and you have chosen a final date for your event, Doodle will even send out a follow up email to all the people that you invited letting them know of the chosen date (they can even add it to their calendar straight from the email).
Doodle is completely free if you are looking for basic functionality and is perfect if you don’t organise events that often. If on the other hand you want to use some of the other great features such as calendar integration, automatic reminders (great for those who don’t respond unless they are hassled), and even your company branding, then you might want to consider one of their paid accounts which start at around £25 per year.
All in all we think that Doodle is a great tool for anyone who has been tasked with organising their next company event and will certainly make your life a doddle! We hope you enjoy using it. 🙂