When to meet: find a time that works for everyone

Working out when to meet is a counting problem, and a message thread is a poor place to count. The reliable method has three steps. Ask everyone for all the times they are free, lay the answers over each other on one grid, and pick the slot with the most people in it.

Why a thread fails

A thread asks one question at a time. Someone proposes Tuesday at 2. Two people say yes, one says no, and a fourth offers Wednesday morning. Now there are two proposals and four partial answers, and nobody has said anything about Thursday.

Each reply answers only the times already on the table. The time that suits everyone may be one that nobody proposed.

A thread also rewards speed. The first proposal sets the frame, and later replies react to it. A person who reads the thread three hours later finds a half-made decision and has to choose between agreeing and reopening it. Some people agree to a time that is bad for them, and the meeting starts with someone missing or distracted.

The last problem is that a thread has no total. To learn how many people can make Wednesday at 10, someone has to scroll up and add the replies by hand. Any reply that changes an earlier answer makes the sum wrong.

Collect availability, not votes

The fix is to change the question. Do not ask "does Tuesday at 2 work?". Ask "when are you free this week?".

An availability grid does this. The rows are times, the columns are days, and each person marks every cell they can make. Nobody has to react to anyone else's proposal, so the answers do not depend on who replied first.

Here is a small example with four people and half-hour slots on one morning.

The answer is 10:00, and nobody had to propose it.

The grid works only if people mark every slot they could make, not only the ones they like. A person who marks two favorite slots hides the six others they could manage, and the overlap shrinks. Say this in the ask. The wording is in how to ask a group when we can meet.

Read the grid for the whole meeting, not one slot

The count in one cell tells you who is free for that slot. A meeting usually covers more than one slot, so the count that matters is the number of people free for the whole length.

Take the table above and suppose the meeting runs for an hour. An hour is two half-hour slots, so each candidate start time needs both of its slots.

No start time has all four. The 10:00 slot looked perfect for a half-hour meeting, and it is not enough for an hour. Ana leaves at 10:30 and Dev arrives at 10:00, so those two share only thirty minutes.

This is an easy way to misread a grid. The fix is to count people per start time, not per cell. You can also set the slot length equal to the meeting length, so that one cell is one meeting. When to meet survey: what to ask and how to set it up covers how to choose the slot length.

Three decisions before you ask

1. The date range. Keep it short. A week or two is enough for most meetings, and a long range gives people more cells to fill in.
2. The daily window. Offer only the hours a meeting could happen. Nine to five is a sensible default for one office.
3. The slot length. Match it to the meeting. A one-hour meeting does not need 15-minute slots.

The survey post linked above goes through each setting with examples.

Mind the time zones

A grid only works when each person reads it in their own time zone. If the organizer's 9:00 is shown as 9:00 to someone eight hours away, that person marks the wrong cells and the count is wrong.

Check that your tool converts times for each viewer. A slot late in the organizer's day can fall on the next calendar day for someone else, and it should appear under that day for them.

If the tool does not convert, name the zone in the ask and in the title of the grid. "All times are London time" is enough. Then expect a mistake or two, and confirm the chosen time with anyone in a distant zone before you send the invite.

Time zones also shrink the grid. Two offices eight hours apart share little or none of a normal working day. In that case the question is less "when is everyone free?" and more "who takes the early or late slot this time?". Decide that openly, and rotate it if the meeting repeats.

When no time suits everyone

With four people, a full count is likely. With ten, expect to go without one. Decide how you will choose before you look at the answers, so the choice follows a rule and not a preference.

• Name who must be there. A decision meeting needs the person who decides. A review needs the author. Drop every slot that a required person cannot make.
• Take the highest count among the slots that remain.
• Break ties with a stated rule. The earliest slot is a simple one. Another is the slot that avoids the edge of anyone's day.
• Tell the people who will miss it first. Say what they will get instead, such as notes, a recording or a short catch-up.

If the best slot still leaves out half the group, the grid is telling you something. The range was too short, the window was too narrow, or the meeting is too large. Widen the dates by a few days and ask again, or split the meeting into two smaller ones with one person attending both.

A long meeting is also harder to place than a short one. If an hour has no good slot, check whether forty-five minutes or thirty would do. The table above has a full count for thirty minutes and none for sixty.

Pick the time and close the question

When most people have answered, choose the slot with the highest count. You do not have to wait for the last reply. Once the people who must attend have answered and the deadline has passed, the result is good enough to act on.

Then say the decision once, in the place where everyone will see it, and put it on the calendar. Do this the same day. Availability goes stale quickly, because people fill free slots with other things. A grid answered on Monday and acted on the following Monday describes a week that no longer exists.

When the question is which day and not which hour, the same counting works on dates. See how to find a date when everyone is available.

Common mistakes

• Proposing a time and asking for objections. Silence is not agreement. It is people who have not read the message.
• Counting cells and not meetings. A slot with everyone in it helps only if the next slot has them too.
• Treating the grid as a vote on preference. The grid shows who can attend. If you also want to know what people prefer, ask that as a second question about the top two or three slots.
• Leaving the grid open after you decide. Late answers arrive, the best slot appears to change, and someone asks whether the meeting is moving. Close it or say plainly that the time is fixed.
• Asking about a month. People answer the first week carefully and guess at the rest.
• Marking for someone else. A guess about a colleague's free time is worse than no answer, because it counts the same as a real one.

Questions people ask next

How many answers are enough?

Enough to include everyone the meeting cannot run without. For a team meeting that is usually most of the team. For a decision meeting it can be three people out of eight. Set the deadline, send one reminder, then decide with what you have.

Should I mark times I could make but would not like?

Yes, unless the organizer says otherwise. An early slot you dislike may be the only one the group shares. If a slot is truly impossible, leave it empty. If it is only unpleasant, mark it and say so in a message.

What about a meeting that repeats every week?

Ask about a typical week, not a specific one. Tell people to ignore one-off events and mark the hours that are usually free. Run the grid again when the group changes or when attendance drops.

What if I am only meeting one other person?

You do not need a grid for two people. Offer two or three specific times and let the other person pick. The grid earns its place at about four people, when the answers stop fitting in one head.

Is a spreadsheet good enough?

It can be. A shared sheet with times down the side and a column per person is a grid. It will not convert time zones or count overlap across a meeting length unless you build that. For a group in one office it is a fair choice. For a group across zones, use a tool made for the job. What to look for in a when to meet app has a checklist.

Where to run the grid

If the group already talks in Slack, the grid can live there. Meeting Mouse posts an availability poll as one channel message when you run /meet with a title. Each person marks their free slots in their own time zone, and the message updates with the three best times by headcount above a grid of who is free when. A slot that lands on a different day for someone far away is grouped under their day. The organizer then picks the final time, and a thread reply announces it with an Add to Google Calendar link. How Meeting Mouse works shows the four steps.