By Rian Fehrman
As a cloud software consultant, I frequently review new software systems and integrations between different cloud products. A while back, I stumbled on an interesting way to give our clients access to my availability and automate the scheduling of meetings and conference calls. I was reviewing an application named Zapier to see if it could provide a solution to a case management dilemma my client had. I quickly realized that I had found an amazing utility that could do a number of very cool things with the products I was already using.
Zapier, in short, brings popular cloud software systems together. It can “trigger” actions in one system based on the actions in another. I had been using Join Me for conference calls / screen sharing for years, and every meeting ultimately ended up on my Office 365 calendar. I had also begun experimenting with a product called Calendly which looks at your Office 365 calendar and then provides your availability via a website using the criteria I have set in my preferences. You can then share the link with whomever you wish, and they can pick an available slot on your calendar. But here’s where it gets interesting…
Zapier allowed me to tie Office 365, Calendly and Join Me together. Now I provide a link in my email signature that says, “Click here to check my availability”.
I tell my client to click the link at the bottom of the email, review my available timeslots, and pick a time to meet with me.
From there Zapier receives a notification that this has happened, and triggers Join Me to send a meeting invitation to the client and myself for the conference call / screen share session. The Join Me meeting ends up on my calendar Automagically!
The beautiful thing is that this type of automation can be accomplished with Zapier for many other products. For example, maybe I use GoToMeeting instead of Join Me and Gmail instead of Office 365. No problem! Zapier works with 1000+ cloud based applications, so if you are a cloud user, there are a ton of options.
Happy Automating!
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