TimeBridge: coordinating meetings across different calendars

in Reviews by David Miron — July 21, 2010 at 2:30 pm | 2 comments

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Every savvy exchange user knows how frustrating it is to navigate impossible employee time constraints in an attempt to schedule a company meeting. things get even hairier when someone who is not part of the organization has to be taken into consideration. telephones, emails, legwork and patience are real virtues in such situations, and by the time the meetings take place the organizer is so bedraggled that it reflects on the meeting itself. Timebridge has a product aimed squarely at those who sympathize with this scenario.

Founded in 2005, Timebridge is a company whose mission, in their words, is to turn its users into meeting heroes.  The company has developed a meeting scheduling web application that addresses every aspect of a meeting’s life cycle.  The application tries to extend standard exchange features and share them across companies and calendar systems.

Timebridge comes in different flavors, the lite version is free. Premium versions cost anywhere from $14 per month to $12 per month, per user, for firms with more than 15 users. for comparison average hosted exchange accounts run around $10 per month, per user.

Sign up was effortless and quick. The initial setup process was also straight forward, I hesitated before authorizing Timebridge to have full access to my Google Calender and contacts. I probably would have zipped through this part if not for all the additional information and ‘learn more’ options that I encountered. In hindsight all the information was very helpful and left me with very few questions. The application needs to synchronize with your calender, Timebridge is compatible with: Outlook, Google, Yahoo, iCal, Lotus notes, Entourage, and more. The company also sports  an iPhone application.

during the setup process I was asked whether I was willing to share my availability information with other Timebridge users, this seems like a quintessential question as it sits at the  heart application’s offering.  Features seemed to have been planned for every contingency, seeing which of the people you plan to invite is available, (if they allowed this option). offering invitees different time slots and letting them choose what they would prefer. Scheduling a meeting follows a straight course:

1. Setting up Proposed Meeting Times in order to increase the likelihood of confirmation
2. Select Attendees based on their availability
3. Determining the nature of the meeting (actual, video or audio conference)
4. Setting an agenda for the meeting, action items, circulating attachments, and adding notes.

Timebridge has mashed up with Box.net to provide storage space for uploaded files, Google Maps to provide travel directions for meetings.

I tried the free version and set up demo meetings with my family and found The application to be easy to use, and fun to work with. The website offers so much help and answers along the way that it was a joy to use. The application seems destined to succeed if  they manage to bring in big numbers of users who share their availability information. On its site, the company claims to have more than 400,000 current users and is still growing, I suggest we keep an eye on them.

Read more about TimeBridge on TheWadi Index

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