Doodle It, Doodlebug!

Have you heard of Doodle before now? If so, what do you think? Are you hooked? If you are anything like me and my group of girlfriends then it has most likely changed your entire social life/calendar, and if you haven't heard of Doodle before now keep reading because you are in for a real treat!

I first encountered Doodle back in the Spring when my girlfriends and I were attempting to plan our Girls Beach Weekend. Needless to say 12 girls responding a single e-mail is always a disaster, let alone several e-mails with multiple different dates per girl that fit each one of their schedules, is what you call a scheduling nightmare!

That's when my friend Katie in Chicago, saved us all from the mayhem. She sent us an e-mail with a link to Doodle. If you are like me, you are probably thinking "Doodle? What is this all about? I thought we were just trying to figure out dates to go to the beach for a weekend." Guess what, you are wrong, Doodle is life changing and makes scheduling easy for everyone!

So what is Doodle? Doodle takes the pain out of finding a suitable date and time for a group of people to meet. It can be used to schedule meetings, appointments, movie nights, a group event or family reunion, the possibilities are endless! Doodle is simple, quick, requires no registration, and is free! What is there not to like about that?

Here's how to schedule an event with Doodle!

On the home page
Click "Schedule event >>"

General information
Provide at least a title and your name. Use the optional description field to add further details, e.g., location, agenda, or duration.

Select dates
Select at least one day to be voted on by clicking on its day. A click on a selected day removes it from the selection.

Select times
If you want, you can refine the selected dates by providing a time, a place, or anything else. Click on "Add further time slots" if you need further time slots. And click "Copy and paste first row" if you want to enter the same time for all days.

You can click on "Finish" at any time to reach the next page. You can leave all the time slots empty if you prefer to vote on complete days only.

Done!
Your poll is now complete. If you have provided an e-mail address in the first step, you will receive two e-mails with one link each. Please forward one to the people who are supposed to participate in your poll. Please do not forward the other link (the so-called admin link), but use it to edit, export, or delete your poll if necessary.

If you have not provided an e-mail address in the first step, the two links will be displayed on the page

Voting (my favorite step!)
Your participants can now use the link you sent them to visit the poll and cast their votes. You can use the same link to cast your own votes if you want or to observe the poll's progress.

Now you can't tell me after reading this post you're not already thinking of an event you can use Doodle! To make you feel better you aren't alone, I was the exact same way and I think I can speak for most of my girlfriends and say they were just as excited about using Doodle as I was! Well get to planning and be the first of your friends or coworkers to send out a Doodle link to schedule your next get together or office meeting, they'll be thanking you for making scheduling easy!