Meetingmaker

NYU's Calendaring Tool

By Christian Grewell & Sehna Rostom

Meetingmaker is a user-friendly program for Windows, Macintosh, or Solaris that helps you manage the kind of scheduling and taskmanagement information that you might currently keep in a paper calendar or electronic device. Meetingmaker, though, has many advantages over a paper calendar: you can access your schedule from any computer connected to NYU's net work; receive reminders of upcoming meetings; coordinate or (optionally) share your calendar with other people; delegate the management of your calendar to an assistant; easily find an available time, room, and equipment for a meeting, and then propose it to colleagues (or respond to proposals from others); disseminate information about a meeting's agenda; and maintain todo lists for yourself (see figure 1).

Figure 1. The four main Meetingmaker windows (left to right): Daily calendar; Monthly calendar; Proposals; and To-Do List.

Meetingmaker Features

Meetingmaker works by storing the schedule of each person who uses it on a shared server, allowing you to:

• Plan and schedule meetings
  Send meeting invitations, automatically reserve meeting rooms and equipment (projectors, VCRs, etc.) or schedule recurring meetings. Meet ingmaker allows you to check the availability of individual attendees (so long as they also use Meetingmaker), or you can use the Auto-Pick feature to quickly find the earliest time that all required guests can attend. With your invitation, you can also include an agenda or notes. With Meetingmaker, you can accept or decline meeting proposals from your colleagues; the software will automatically notify them of your response and, if you can attend, add the event to your calendar.
  
  
• Organize your personal calendar
  Easily organize all aspects of your personal calendar and let other Meetingmaker users know about your availability for meetings. You can also keep track of personal appointments, while hiding the details from others, as desired.
  
  
• Share calendars
  View the details of another person's calendar through a feature called "proxy." Your colleagues may give you proxy rights to view, or view and edit, their calendars. Similarly, you can give others proxy access to your calendar and control whether they can read or update your calendar. Meetingmaker can also control whether or not that person sees descriptions of your activities or to-do items.
  
  
• Maintain a list of tasks
  Use the To-Do List feature to organize and prioritize your important tasks. You can also assign tasks to other people who use Meetingmaker.
  
  

• Figure 2. Meetingmaker can remind you of upcoming meetings.

  Set meeting reminders
  Specify when and how you want Meetingmaker to remind you of upcoming events: play a sound, blink an icon, send an e-mail notification, or open a reminder window on your computer's desktop (see figure 2).
  
  
• View a master schedule
  Use the Master Schedule feature to see and select a meeting time when an entire Meetingmaker group-including guests, locations, and resources—is available. Your department's Meetingmaker administrator can create public Meetingmaker groups, and you can create your own personal groups.
  
  
• Synchronize your calendar
  Synchronize your Meetingmaker calendar with Palm OS platform handheld devices, such as those made by Palm and Handspring (do-it-yourself instructions are available in the NYUHome Meetingmaker channel described below).
  
  
• Access your calendar from home or on the road
  Connect to or update your Meetingmaker calendar from work, your home computer or, when traveling, from any Internet-connected computer. Since your calendar is stored on a server (rather than your work computer), any changes you make to your schedule will be available no matter where you access it.

Get Started & Learn More

If you have an active Meetingmaker account but do not see the Meetingmaker channel when you log into NYUHome, you may need to make it visible. To do so:

1. Select the PREFERENCES link at the top of the NYUHome screen.
2. Click the "See List" link in the YOUR CHANNELS section.
3. Select the checkbox next to the Meetingmaker option within the WORK subsection.

ITS currently offers version 7.5 of Meetingmaker, used by more than 1,000 NYU staff and administrators. We are now in the process of evaluating a new version of the software with enhanced web features. If you have questions about accessing or using Meetingmaker at NYU, please send e-mail to: meetingmaker.help@nyu.edu.

Author Biography