These applications help businesses schedule meetings, phone calls, appointments, and webinars quickly with the help of integration's with online calendars. With the help of this software type, you can easily check the availability of your coworkers, pick a suitable time for everyone in the team and schedule meetings and events. Scheduling software saves you the hassle of sending emails back-and-forth. It is also handy if you wish to set up meetings with team members in different time zones. Calendar and scheduling software is a must for distributed businesses to manage their schedule efficiently and to save time. Read the full software guide...
Calendar software helps you create and edit online calendars and share them with multiple users.
The software generally allows you to set your availability and check the availability of other users, which makes scheduling easier for everyone in the group or organization.
Organizations often use scheduling software to schedule business meetings and appointments, create and manage employee schedules, assign jobs, plan work shifts and track everything in real time.
More advanced products allow you to track employee attendance and work hours, set automatic reminders for upcoming meetings and appointments, and make informed scheduling decisions based on a worker’s availability, skill sets and current location.
Most products allow employees to update job status in real time, even when they are working off-site. Some even allow employees to swap shifts with their colleagues.
Other key functionalities include automated scheduling, time zone synchronization, resource scheduling, and the ability to generate reports on no-shows, paid time-off, etc.
What type of scheduling solution you need depends on the nature and size of your business. Service-based businesses, such as, saloons, dental clinics, restaurants and field service providers must have appointment scheduling software, while almost any business with more than a few workers will need an employee scheduling solution. If you are looking for features exclusive to a certain sector, consider choosing an industry-specific solution.
Considering the size of your business and its growth potential is also important. For instance, a startup with less than 20 employees may need basic calendar management and online booking functionalities. SMBs with around 100 employees may require time tracking, resource scheduling and shift planning features. If your business is likely to grow fast, you need a scalable solution. On the other hand, enterprises with hundreds of employees working from multiple locations often need a fully featured product capable of addressing any scheduling needs from a single point.
You should also consider if you have any industry-specific requirements. For instance, on-location service providers, such as, transportation companies often require coordinating shifts between multiple locations. Healthcare companies often need to send automated reminders for last minute schedule changes. Here are some other things to consider.
Not all products under this category are designed to address the same kinds of scheduling needs. Depending on their area of focus, these products can be categorized into three main types.
By using the right calendar and scheduling software, businesses can gain from the following benefits.
Overall, calendar and scheduling software helps businesses save time and money on scheduling.
| API | Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are programmatic intersections with external products or platforms that allow for custom integrations with your own solutions or other solutions you are using. |
| Calendar Management | Manage and update calendars for scheduling or consolidation of events across teams, departments or business functions. |
| Contact Management | Manage large amounts of personal or business contacts in a centralized system. |
| Contact Sharing | Share contacts across teams or platforms to give access to others or to migrate address books across different systems. |
| Email Integration | Integration with email clients or providers to create and send emails as well as view received emails within an application. |
| External Integrations | Integrations with other software products or platforms to improve efficiency and compatibility across systems. |
| Google Apps Integration | Integration with the G Suite, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, etc. |
| Multi-User | Supports more than just one user account and generally allows for collaboration with colleagues. |
| Notifications | Includes notification support and sends you alerts with information on important events and other time sensitive instances. For example through push notifications on mobile phones or email notifications. |
| Project Management | Manage projects from conception through the planning stage to delivery and post-project reporting phases. This allows organisation teams to organise resources, plan budgets and improve efficiency in the delivery of project objectives. |
| Scheduling | Schedule tasks, resources, appointments, payments, communications, etc. |
