Sometimes it is tough scheduling events for a large family, or for lots of friends. Coordinating everyone's schedule usually involves a lot of back-and-forth until you finally find a time slot that works for everyone. Here is where Doodle can help you.
Doodle does two things for you. First, it allows you to easily poll everyone and find out their opinion on something -- for example, do you prefer potato chips or tortilla chips with your Duke Dip? Second, you can create a schedule of options for when you want to do something, such as take a vacation, have a picnic, come paint my bedroom.
Once you create the poll (which is all menu driven and very easy to do), you just give a URL to everyone who you want to participate. They click it, put in their response, and away you go. You have to have an account to create a poll, but not to just vote.
It takes longer to explain it than to just do it, so I created a couple of samples for you. Normally, I would e-mail the link to you, but for the sample below you can just click and go.
There are various options in creating a poll. For example, I didn't select specific times of day to ask when you wanted to vacation, since I am really just interested in the days. I configured mine so everyone can see the results, but you could mask this from the participants if you wanted, for example, to let everyone vote without being influenced by others. You can also elect to be notified when someone votes if you use a news reader (RSS type feed).
Go ahead and start Doodling now. It is a good step toward becoming more organized.
Yesterday I used Doodle for the first time: I set up a poll with options of dates for 5 of us to get together for dinner. Only one other person "got it." But then today, after we selected the date, I put together a chart of menu categories (main dish, dessert, etc.) and each person fill in their name and the menu item they are bringing. Without any further instruction from me, most of our group has figured it out and signed up for their dish. I just set up the poll/chart (easy!), and emailed them the URL. This is handy!
ReplyDelete