If you’re like most busy professionals then you probably know just what a pain it is to schedule a meeting with one - let alone more than one - other busy person. It probably won’t surprise you that on average it can take as many as nine (as in one less than ten) email messages to schedule a single meeting with a single person. If this sounds like a ridiculous waste of time to you than Tungle is an application you’ll love.

What is Tungle?

According to the company, Tungle is a tool that saves you time when you are coordinating meetings. You use it to share your availability with anyone before sending a meeting invitation. Best of all, Tungle works across organizations, independent of which calendar or groupware system you or your meeting request recipient are using.

How does Tungle Work?

Tungle works two ways, the first is for people that already know each other well enough to share calendars. For them via the magic of peer-to-peer Tungle can look at the calendars of all the people who might need to be invited and at a glance let you see when people have open slots in their schedules. For those of you that have used this feature on Exchange, it is similar with one key difference; it works with people both within and outside of your organization.

But what about for scheduling a meeting with someone with whom I don’t share a calendar?

This is one of the coolest features of Tungle, something the company calls Tungle Spaces. It simplifies life considerably not only for the person making the meeting request but also for the person receiving that request. On the receiving end your Tungle experience begins when you receive an email with a request for a meeting. In that email there’s to the Tungle Space of the individual who sent the request. Within this page you can see days and times where the person requesting the meeting is free to conduct the meeting in question. As the recipient, all you have to do is pick an open slot. Once you do, the person making the request is notified and the meeting is scheduled. No nine emails, no half a dozen phone calls no wasted time.

It’s so simple that you might even be deceived into thinking that Tungle is a simple application but this isn’t true. First off, Tungle isn’t really an “application” but rather a plug-in. Right now Tungle only works with Outlook but they’ll be bringing out other plug-ins for other software applications in short order. Secondly, the magic behind Tungle is really taking place on the side of the person making the request.

Here’s why. Most schedule programs can only work if people are on a common calendar system. This is because the program can only work if it can see the database with the information for both parties in order for it to compare two or more schedules and propose times when both parties are available. While this does work to an extent, it limits utility substantially; usually to within a single organization and often to a single group within an organization that shares software like Microsoft Exchange. What’s more, this solution can cost up to $500 per user - hardly reasonable for a small business - especially since most small businesses have more problems scheduling meetings with people outside the company than within it - the part of the problem that Exchange doesn’t address anyway.

Tungle solves this problem and it does so at the incredibly affordable price of free. Tungle also accommodates different times zones intelligently so that when you see a Tungle space or a shared Tungle calendar, the times you see are for your time zone and the times the other party sees are for their own. In other words when you schedule that meeting for 3 PM in New York, the person in California won’t be calling in at 3 PM Pacific Tim to learn he missed the meeting but will call in at 12 Noon assuming of course he isn’t out surfing (being from California and all).

Tungle won a Demo-God aware at this spring’s DEMO Conference and their six-minute presentation can give you even more insight into the simplicity and intelligence of this application. It is just below. Take a look and I’m sure you’ll be as convinced as I was after tying Tungle that it can really save you time and take the pain out of one of the most universally frustrating things you frequently have to do.

Personally, I think this is an awesome time saver. In fact, I have only one complaint; while I can’t find fault with the choice of Outlook as the first platform for which they developed I think they need to get the version for the Mac out the darn door… come on guys - hurry up already! people with Macs need to schedule meetings too!

Tags: Getting Things Done, Software, Tips - How To's, Video //