Arranging meetings/web calls at work

Irish_Tom

Irish_Tom

Irish_Tom

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If you need to arrange a meeting or web conference call at work, do you email the relevant parties to agree the date and time and then send a calendar invite, or do you just fire off an invite, hope that everyone accepts and then rearrange if necessary?

We have a client who fires off meeting invites completely out of the blue without checking our availability first and I find it really odd. There’s usually no message with it either, just a title like “marketing call” so we have to guess what they want to discuss…

Is it me, or is this unusual?
 
Many ways to skin the cat. Largely depends on your relationship with the people and the level of urgency of the meeting.
 
Thats simply a case of a bad client.

We have clients that send their entire email contents in a subject line, in capital letters, you get them in all industries.

I send my available time slots, ask if its suitable and fire an invite from there.
 
Irish_Tom said:
If you need to arrange a meeting or web conference call at work, do you email the relevant parties to agree the date and time and then send a calendar invite, or do you just fire off an invite, hope that everyone accepts and then rearrange if necessary?

We have a client who fires off meeting invites completely out of the blue without checking our availability first and I find it really odd. There’s usually no message with it either, just a title like “marketing call” so we have to guess what they want to discuss…

Is it me, or is this unusual?
Click to expand...
I use the scheduling tool
 
Fire off the meeting invite. I will have used scheduling wizard to make sure those who I need are "as good as can be available".

No agenda is a dick move though. In my more immature days I would decline and say there is no agenda. I've grown to appreciate that people like to talk to develop their views though.
 
If it's just a call with 1 other person then it's easy enough to just send a meeting request and they can propose an alternative time if it doesn't suit. If you're arranging a meeting with multiple people it's not so easy to do that with so many invites and proposed dates flying around.
I'd probably always discuss times beforehand first anyway.
 
Thanks all, glad it’s not just me. :)

All-caps messages in the subject line and meetings about meetings make me feel slightly better, it could be worse! :eek:
 
I'm supposed to have an on-site meeting, and the company moved it, but they did so by sending a Microsoft teams meeting email.

I had to ring them to clarify they still wanted me there, which they do.

Very odd
 
Internal meetings I will pull up diaries and book around availability where I can and go with when ‘most’ are available, ensuring the key people I need are but offer options to move with context where I can.

External I will agree beforehand then get a diary invite sent out. Invites that just add me I will make a decision based on the nature of the meeting as to if I accept or reject.
 
If the meeting is with people internal to the company then of course the protocol should always be to just use the calendars and pick a free time that suits... No faffing around with emails and asking people, that sounds out of control.

If the meeting is with non company people, then maybe a cursory email, or just fire a meeting request off from the hip..

I've worked for large multinationals where it could take 5 or 6 'rounds' organising a meeting, despite everyone having a visible calendar.. Sad times..

And rather than Spreadsheets, we use Confluence(Wiki) and Jira (issue/task tracker) amongst other tools.. there is nothing like an ad-hoc meeting where people waste an hour, talk BS and write nothing down and forget everything the next day.. :)

And yes, I am fun at parties ;)
 
Bit of a mixed bag really. Internally we have Teams and shared calendar availability within the Group. Working with s contractor on a project and we have added some of the more senior PMs from there to our exchange so they can manage schedules. Others within the contracting firm use Google meets and throw out optimistic invites.
 
Housey said:
Internal meetings I will pull up diaries and book around availability where I can and go with when ‘most’ are available, ensuring the key people I need are but offer options to move with context where I can.

External I will agree beforehand then get a diary invite sent out. Invites that just add me I will make a decision based on the nature of the meeting as to if I accept or reject.
Click to expand...
Same.
 
The advantage with only dealing with other Dev / support staff is meetings are far more informal and generally arranged when voice would be easier with multiple people.

The invites I do get out of the blue still aren't normally out of the blue. They'll have been some email chain issue ongoing.
 
If internal and people you know and can adequately explain the meeting in the invite - fine to just send an invite out of the blue (after checking their calendars). If it’s external people it probably needs/has an email chain first, and you can’t check their diaries either - so needs an email first to check schedules.

Firing off an invite out of the blue is generally rude, especially to people not in your organisation. We’re busy people, I’m not giving up an hour for a “xxxx catch-up “ without an explanation of why!
 
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