ResourceRoom :: Tungle

If you are a normal campus minister, you are constantly scheduling a lot of meetings with a lot of different people. If you don’t already have a phone that is smart for you, you should get one. Today’s resource might be of some value to you as well.

Tungle is a free, online meeting scheduler. Here is a brief description of how it works:

Just this last week, I wanted to set up a meeting with four students. I go to Tungle.me. I sign in and click “Schedule a meeting.” On the calendar, I highlight all of the times that I am free for this particular meeting. Then I enter the students’ email address and send them an invitation.

When the students received the email, they each went to the link and highlighted the times they were free as well. Once all five of us had highlighted a common time that works for each of us, Tungle automatically scheduled our meeting! A confirmation email was sent. Tungle automatically updated my Google Calendar and my Google Calendar automatically updated my phone. And we have our meeting on Wednesday.

Here are a few things I love about Tungle:

• It syncs to your already existing calendar. If you use Microsoft Outlook, an iPhone, Google Calendars, or whatever…Tungle will sync with it.
• Tungle automatically updates your calendar for you. For example, if you stated that on Monday that you were free for a meeting at 2pm on Wednesday, but on Tuesday you booked something else at that time…Tungle will automatically update your “available times” so that you students don’t schedule your meeting then and you wind up double-booked.
• You can get a personalized page to send students to for the purpose of booking meetings. For example, my page is http://tungle.me/mynameisbrandon. When students ask if they can meet with them, I can send them to that link and they can schedule a meeting.

A warning:

• Some students have expressed to me how impersonal it is to schedule a meeting with someone online. I can appreciate that. I simply share with them that I’ve got a billion meetings this week and by scheduling it online, I eliminate the risk of double-booking. They understand that.

Check Tungle out. It’s made scheduling meetings with students (especially with groups of students) headache-free. I highly recommend!