Scheduling meetings is tough, but rescheduling is even harder. We all know how frustrating it can be to try to find just the right time that accommodates everyone’s availability and preferred working hours. Throw in different time zones and conference rooms and it goes from painful to excruciating. We’d rather schedule dental appointments.
On the Google Calendar team, they’ve noticed that when people talk about scheduling they say things like “I’m trying to find a time” or “let’s search for a new date.” They wondered what would happen if they treated calendaring more like a search problem. Just as Google search applies ranking algorithms to return the most relevant results from the web, they hoped they could rank meeting times based on criteria important to the person scheduling the meeting.
Today they’re launching the result of that experiment, a gadget called Smart Rescheduler, in Google Calendar Labs. Once you enable the Lab, you can find a new time for an event simply by clicking on a link. Their schedule search algorithm will return a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times based on the calendars others have shared with you. You can read more about it on the Gmail Blog.
So next time your boss says “We need to reschedule,” just smile and say “I’m feeling lucky.”