Tech For Free!

There are several tools on the market to help you schedule a meeting or event, but none offer the simplicity that Doodle does, and you can’t beat its price of FREE. Doodle is a free web-based tool that allows you to quickly schedule a meeting/event with multiple people without the hassle of email flying around or a registration process. Here’s how it works.

Schedule an Event
In three simple steps you create a poll in which you indicate possible meeting days and time.

Once you’ve created the poll, Doodle generates a private web address for you to email to your potential attendees. Attendees then click the link, enter their name and then indicate their availability. Below is an example of a poll completed by three people. As you can see Wednesday the 27th at 12:30pm is the day/time that works best for the attendees.

Make a Choice
Doodle also offers up the ability to create a poll so that you can quickly gather input from multiple people. For example lets assume you need to find out from 25 people where they would prefer to eat lunch. Simply fill out the form (two step process), send out the link generated for you by Doodle, sit back and wait for the responses. Below is an example of this type of poll. As you can see Quiznos is the popular vote.

Its Simplicity
Doodle relies upon the old adage of “less is more” which is perfect for the “technically challenged” who often become overwhelmed when there are too many choices or too much instructional text. The homepage offers only two options: “Schedule and Event” or “Make a Choice”. Upon clicking either you are prompted through the setup of the poll and are guided through each page through the use of a Next button, which only becomes available once you’ve added text. Additionally, if you missed something and try to proceed you will receive an error message, which will clearly state what you need to do before you can proceed. If you do happen to get lost, Doodle offers step-by-step instructions on how to create your poll. Help Scheduling an Event | Help Make a Choice

Tracking
If you happen to be one of those people that likes to track your work and keep everything in one central location you can choose to register yourself with Doodle, but its completely optional. If you don’t register, but want to take a look back an previous polls you will need to hold on to the administration link provided to you (provided upon successfully creating your survey).

Integration
Doodle offers a mobile site http://www.doodle.com/mobile/main.html so you can create polls with your mobile device. If you are a Facebook user and want to invite your Facebook friends you can. You can also add Doodle to your iGoogle account, but you will need to register with Doodle.