Back in the dark ages when I was involved in a four year European Commission project to investigate the then emerging Internet technologies, linking up with partners was a pain in the proverbial. Trying to get people to agree on times to meet in Brussels from their homes in Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Eire, France and the UK was a nightmare.
If only we’d had Tungle!
Tungle is an online diary/calendering collaboration tool that is ideal for remote workers, tele or web workers, call them what you will. The facility works with Outlook, Google Calendar and iCal/Entourage and on signing up you are invited to sync with the calendar of your choice. In my case I decided to opt for Outlook and downloaded the Tungle sync software that enables the web portal to interrogate your Outlook calendar and contacts and link them to the online portal.
When I tried to add my Google Calendar I got an error message saying “Sorry, you’ve reached a login page for a domain that isn’t using Google Apps. Please check the web address and try again” Maybe this was my fault and I shall look at this in more detail when I have time.
Once the account is fully established you are then taken to your Tungle home page which, as you would expect, bears an uncanny resemblence to any other calendar you use on the PC or online. From here you start to schedule a meeting by typing in the basics such as reason for the meeting and the location.
Next, click on the invite people option which allows you to choose attendees from your synched Outlook list and then you go on to suggest times. This is simply achieved by dragging a tool over the empty parts of your calendar so you don’t get double booked. You can then preview your message and on “send” this is sent to the delegates you have chosen.
They receive an email saying you want to set up as meeting and clicking on a link takes them to a Tungle calendar with the proposed times highlighted and they then choose what days and times suits them and their accepted choices are sent back to you and entered onto your master Tungle calendar.
Note that at this level the people you invite to meetings via Tungle do not have to have a Tungle account activated. However, if they want to participate fully and interact with you and suggest meeting times then a Tungle account is necessary.
There is also an option to share calendars with contacts of your choice.
Another option is Meet with Me. Meet With Me is a personal link to let others see your free/busy calendar (the blocks of time when you are free or busy – not your calendar details) and propose meeting times to you. Add your link to your email signature, blog, website, profile page (Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, etc) or print it on business cards, letters or promotional items.
Where Tungle scores for me is that it is ideal for linking up with contacts in different time zones and the service is platform and calendar independent.
I haven’t been able to test it extensively as my works system is so heavily firewalled and protected but looking at the functionality it has, I can see this being of great use to groups of people separated in time and space but linked through the web.
