Neatcall | Support | The scheduling process

You can offer several time slots simply by marketing them in your calendar, and they will be sent to your invitees as tentative suggested time slots. Each invitee can confirm all the offered timeslots, accept a few or only one of them, or reject them all.

If you are a Microsoft Outlook user with the NeatDesktop plug-in installed, you can initiate events directly from your Outlook. Just mark on the Outlook scheduler several time slots, save them using the Neatcall task pane, and send your invitation via email to your invitees.

If you are using Google Calendar, you can mark the time slots from within your Neatcall calendar, and they will be automatically synchronized with your Google Calendar events.

If you are web user who does not use Google Calendar you can still use NeatNet to suggest time slots and send the suggestions to your colleagues, without any need for the Google Calendar.

If you are a mobile phone user who is using the Neatcall application from your phone, you can offer several time slots and manage the whole process directly from your mobile phone.

Invitees will receive the suggested time slots by you by SMS or Email, simply reply them and Neatcall server would pick the best time slot.

You can offer one, two or even three time slots and let your invitees pick the ones that are good for them. We've limited the number of options to three for two reasons. One is that offering too many options is confusing. The other is that we want to let the invitees see all suggested time slots on a simple SMS message, and also let them pick their options through SMS. This is what enables the Neatcall famous Speed Mode Reply™ mechanism, allowing you to coordinate meetings and conferences in seconds. Since SMS messages have limitations on the number of characters, Neatcall designed a special way which lets the initiator offer up to three time slots, and all that information can be conveyed in one SMS message that fits all types of handsets. Within this message, each timeslot is accompanied by a digit or a letter. The invitees will see the invitation and the offered time slots numbered 1,2,3, and they can make their pick simply by replying to this SMS and typing the selected digits for each time slot. E.g. a response of "1,3" indicates the invitee agrees to the first and third suggested time slots.

Invitations can be sent in three different formats:

Regular SMS message
SMS with WAP link
EMAIL with web link

It is your decision how invitations should be delivered and you can combine messaging formats. Invitees receiving an invitation in a regular textual SMS have up to three time slot options. Each option is marked with a letter or a digit. The invitee needs only to press “reply” on the invitation message, and type in the letters or digits that symbolize the time slots that work for him.

Neatcall server is here to help you. In situations were the responses are clear server takes the decision. In all other situation server provides you the relevant information and let you to take the decision.

If a certain time slot has been accepted by ALL invitees, this is a full match. Neatcall will automatically book the event, and notify all parties.

If all invitees rejected all time slots, the server will automatically cancel the event and send a cancelation message to all parties.

In the remaining two cases the server will let the initiator decide:

If there is a “popular” time slot, i.e. time slot that not all but most invitees picked, Neatcall will suggest this time slot to the initiator, and let him confirm it, pick another one, or cancel the event.

If there is an equal number of vote for several timeslots, Neatcall will provide this fact to the initiator and suggest the earliest preferred time slot. The initiator will decide whether to confirm this timeslot, book another one, cancel the event or offer new time slots.

Neatcall lets the initiator decide dynamically who is a "must be" and who is an “optional” for any specific event. There is no need to set “must be” people in advance. When setting a new event, all invitees are perceived as optional. Upon receiving the invitees' responses, you may decide who is "must be" and who is not.

The reason for that is that we discovered that very often some invitees seem at the beginning to be mandatory, but when responses start arriving, they no longer seem to be so. That is why we developed this “dynamic must mechanism”. For example, if for a certain event 5 out of 6 picked Tomorrow at 09:00AM, the initiator will switch it to tomorrow 10:00AM although this time slot received only 4 out of 6, because among these 4 invitees there is someone who just turned out to be more important to the initiator than other 2 persons he initially thought were mandatory.

So you always get a dynamic list of responses, seeing who answered what, and based on that, you can finalize your pick. For example it could be that 5 people picked option A and only 3 people picked option B so according to Neatcall mechanism the server will indicate to the initiator that option A is the best popular option. Yet you as Initiator can decide that although option B has less people, the people over there are more important to you, more “must” to the event, so you alter the server's recommendation to option B and pick that timeslot. The decision is always yours. Neatcall brings you optimal scenarios with all available options, and helps you to take the best decision according to your real-time needs.

Yes. Once an event is declined, either by the Neatcall server or by the Initiator, a cancelation message is sent to all users indicating that the event was cancelled.

Neatcall lets the initiator decide dynamically who is a "must be" and who is an “optional” for any specific event. There is no need to set “must be” people in advance. When setting a new event, all invitees are perceived as optional. Upon receiving the invitees' responses, you may decide who is "must be" and who is not.

The reason for that is that we discovered that very often some invitees seem at the beginning to be mandatory, but when responses start arriving, they no longer seem to be so. That is why we developed this “dynamic must mechanism”. For example, if for a certain event 5 out of 6 picked Tomorrow at 09:00AM, the initiator will switch it to tomorrow 10:00AM although this time slot received only 4 out of 6, because among these 4 invitees there is someone who just turned out to be more important to the initiator than other 2 persons he initially thought were mandatory.

So you always get a dynamic list of responses, seeing who answered what, and based on that, you can finalize your pick. For example it could be that 5 people picked option A and only 3 people picked option B so according to Neatcall mechanism the server will indicate to the initiator that option A is the best popular option. Yet you as Initiator can decide that although option B has less people, the people over there are more important to you, more “must” to the event, so you alter the server's recommendation to option B and pick that timeslot. The decision is always yours. Neatcall brings you optimal scenarios with all available options, and helps you to take the best decision according to your real-time needs.