Meeting Planner — Schedule Better Meetings Across Time Zones
Running meetings across time zones or with distributed teams requires clarity and empathy. The Meeting Planner helps you propose times, visualize participant local times, and select slots that minimize inconvenience. This guide covers participant collection, time-window selection, agenda design, sharing best-practices, and timezone pitfalls.
Collect participants and time zones
Start by collecting each invitee’s preferred time zone or city and their availability windows (morning/afternoon). Use the planner to store cities and compute local times quickly.
Practical tips
- Ask participants for their preferred meeting hours (their local time).
- Allow people to indicate "no earlier than" or "no later than" constraints to narrow windows.
- Prefer midday windows for broad participation if possible — they minimize extreme hours for most regions.
Propose times effectively — keep choices small
Offer 2–3 reasonable slots rather than an open poll. Use the tool to show organizer local time → participant local time to reduce confusion.
- Pick 2–3 candidate windows that meet the majority constraints.
- Share the list with local times for each participant (organizer → participant local).
- Ask for confirmation on preference or conflicts and finalize quickly.
Design a short agenda — timebox and anchor decisions
An agenda drives outcomes. Include goals, time allocations, roles (facilitator, note-taker), and expected decisions or outputs.
- Start with intent: one-sentence outcome for the meeting.
- Timebox agenda items: assign minutes to each topic and track time during the meeting.
- End with decisions & owners: always leave 5 minutes to confirm next steps and owners.
Time zone pitfalls & daylight savings
Beware daylight saving transitions and ambiguous zone names. Where possible, use IANA time zone identifiers (e.g., Europe/London) and show explicit offsets.
Checklist
- Confirm the date and whether DST applies in each participant's zone.
- Display timezone names and offsets (e.g., GMT+1) in communications.
- Test links and calendar invites in a sample participant account when scheduling critical events.
Synchronous meeting recipes
Here are recipes for common meeting types that help you run them efficiently.
- Strict timer for 15 minutes. Each participant answers three questions (yesterday/today/blockers).
- Facilitator keeps time and parks deeper discussions as follow-ups.
- Pre-read materials distributed 24–48 hours before.
- Start with the decision criteria and options; allow a short discussion and close with a vote or owner decision.
Troubleshooting
- Confusion about time: resend times with participant-local labels if there’s a mismatch.
- Last-minute timezone changes: confirm participant time and offer an alternative if needed.
- No-shows: record who couldn’t attend and reschedule with few candidate times.
FAQ
Q: How do I handle very large distributed teams?
A: Break into smaller working groups or use async updates; large synchronous meetings are costly and often inefficient.
Q: Should I always show two timezones?
A: Always show organizer and participant local time; when multiple participants are present, consider a table of local times for the chosen slot.