Despite the fact that numerous companies have tried to solve this problem, scheduling meetings is still a hassle. If you use Google for Work or Edu on the desktop, you are probably familiar with how Google lets you find meeting times across your organization already (though the feature is a bit hidden).
Today, Google is bringing this same “find a time” tool to Android, too.
Similar to how this works on desktop, Google Calendar for Android now lets you find times that work for all the participants in a meeting and it will automatically rank them according to what it believes are the most convenient times for everybody involved.
Google says this should work across time zones, too, and if there are no times that work for everybody, it will figure out which of the conflicting meetings could be most easily rescheduled (because everybody loves it when you reschedule a meeting…).
All of this, of course, only really works for organizations where people already share their schedules and it won’t help you find a meeting time with somebody outside of your organization either.
As Google rightly argues, though, scheduling meetings on the go is now becoming the norm and bringing this functionality to mobile now makes it easier if your are a Google Apps user. The company says it is only launching this feature on Android right now but also plans to bring it to its iOS app in the near future.
If you aren’t a Google user but instead use Outlook or a similar calendaring tool on the desktop, you’re likely familiar with this feature, too. As far as I’m aware, though, Outlook’s mobile apps don’t offer this functionality right now. Microsoft is working on solving this problem, however, and with Invite, it’s testing a mobile app that aims to make it similar to schedule meetings across organizations.