TimeDriver was the company’s solution for individuals (as opposed to enterprise users) who wanted to allow others to see their schedules and book appointments, without revealing their entire calendar. The application also let users create different appointment “books” or specific invitations for different purposes. For example, I set up one appointment book for meetings when I was attending a conference, one for demos of products for review on this blog and yet another for recorded interviews for some of my podcasts. Each “book” could contain the same or different blocks of availability and could be sent to different people with a relevant greeting and invitation text.

The company has now announced that the TimeDriver brand would be discontinued, and the product would be moved under the broader TimeTrade brand. The three scheduling services now offered by TimeTrade now are:

1. TimeTrade Professional. This service is the renamed TimeDriver product for individuals. It costs $29.95 per year, with a free 30-day trial.
2. TimeTrade Workgroup Edition. This is a new application providing appointment scheduling for teams. The Workgroup version allows for corporate branding, reporting, and a way to centrally administer the application. The application also integrates with popular CRM systems like Salesforce.com as well as with team members’ Outlook or Google calendars. It costs $249 per user/per year with a free 30-day trial.
3. TimeTrade Enterprise. This is a self-service scheduling application for major corporations that includes custom web applications, lead routing, multi-location support and a widget-based tool kit and API for integration and customization. Price is available on  application.

If you would like to be able to easily send out invitations to different groups of people for self-serve appointment-making, TimeTrade Professional is a good solution. Personally, I’d use TimeTrade for custom appointment-making but will continue to use Tungle.me for my individual scheduling needs, coupled with occasional use of Doodle when I’m coordinating multiple people’s schedules (and especially when participants are less tech-oriented). Regardless of what tools you end up using, keep in mind time zone issues, particularly if you are traveling between time zones and scheduling; see this post about my time zone snafu and scheduling bungle.

What tool or tools do you use to sync calendars and schedule appointments?

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First, let me say that the experience I’m about to describe will not stop me from using the apps I mention. However, I found some weak spots that put me in a jam, and thought I’d share to help you avoid the same situation.

Where TimeDriver Falls Short

I’ve been singing the praises of TimeDriver, the personal appointment scheduler, because I love the way it lets me break my calendar into smaller chunks — or “Books” — and share them with groups of people who I want to see specific open time blocks on my schedule. I have a Book for my phone demos for WebWorkerDaily, one for my women in business podcast, another for my Second Life podcast, and then I set up one specifically for in-person interviews at SXSW.

What I learned the day I arrived here is that TimeDriver doesn’t translate to a third time zone, meaning that I saw the calendar as Alaska Time (where I live and work), every interviewee saw the scheduler in their time zone, and then we both arrived in Austin, which is in Central Time, we both got the meeting times wrong. The way I found out about this snafu? Missing a long overdue meeting with C.C. Chapman, a colleague and friend. Because of the time zone issue, our meeting actually coincided with my flight into Austin. There was very little I could do to rectify the situation from the air.

When I finally did get TimeDriver tech support on the phone (note: they are excellent and patient), the only solution they could offer was a workaround. Basically I should have switched my computer to Central Time before setting up the schedule Book, then reverted back to my time zone. Then the Book would be in the wrong time slots for Alaska and for the interviewee, but the correct ones for Texas. But then I would have to inform the interviewees (of which there are over a dozen) that they have to note the timezone discrepancy and make adjustments accordingly. Yikes.

Until TimeDriver adds the capability of an alternate “common” time zone for when meeting parties are traveling to meet in a time zone other than their own, you’re going to get very messed up using its scheduling Books.

The Quick Workaround With Meetwith.me

In a panic, I spent my night going through TimeBridge‘s new scheduling solution Meetwith.me (which I recently reviewed) to see if it could be an alternative solution to my appointment dilemma. Unlike TimeDriver’s Books, TimeBridge doesn’t let you designate different time chunks from your calendar for different audiences. However, I figured out that I could sign up again to claim a second Meetwith.me page using a different email address, and then narrow my time availability to just certain blocks of time during my stay at SXSW.

I was able to then send out invites, get responses back and manage the first wave of responses to nail down times. But later, I realized that after the first wave of responses, more had arrived and since I was using a secondary email address, I didn’t see them and missed a number of interview opportunities. Luckily, some persistent PR folks tracked down my primary email and were able to make contact with me through other channels.

In the course of stressing over my scheduling apps dilemma, I ran into Mark Gingras, the CEO of Tungle, another scheduling app. I told him what I was going through and then scolded him. Why? Because when I tried signing up for Tungle.me to see if it might be a good interim solution, I could not access my newly-opened account. We discussed the third time zone issue, and Gingras admitted that Tungle.me did not have a specific solution for it, but he said it was a much-requested feature and hinted at integrating in the future.

It just goes to show that SXSW can test applications to near-breaking, but also provide unprecedented access to heads of application firms who can troubleshoot for you in-person and on the fly!

How do you manage scheduling in multiple time zones with two or more people and with calendar integration?

For the GigaOM network’s complete SXSW coverage, check out this round-up.

Some people have personal assistants scheduling their days. I use a combination of TimeDriver and TimeBridge right now. With TimeDriver, the online personal appointment scheduler, I can create Schedule Books, which are effectively discrete “mini calendars,” or carefully selected portions of my full workday calendar, that I assign to a given type of meeting or call.

For example, if you want to schedule a demo for me to review your application for WebWorkerDaily, you could use my Product Demos link. If you wanted to schedule a half-hour meeting with me at South by Southwest this March to demo your product or be interviewed by me, then you’d use this link. I also have a “let’s Hang Out at SXSW” Schedule Book for friends I want to make sure I see while I’m there. And I have a Schedule Book for my new women’s business podcast to record phone interviews. Each link reveals a discrete number of time slots, and my availability is dependent on my actual Google Calendar availabilities, so if I end up booking time with a client, it automatically removes those time options from TimeDriver’s Schedule Books.

TimeDriver notifies me by email about any schedule additions and inserts them into my Google Calendar. So far, it has been working wonders for me because I don’t have to go back and forth over and over to find a compatible time with people who want to meet with me, and I can designate specific days of the week and specific hours of the day to, say, demos or recorded phone interviews.

I recently reviewed TimeBridge’s Meetwith.me app, and I immediately saw a gap in my scheduling solutions: I wanted to be able to give certain people full access to my calendar to schedule something with me, but didn’t want to share my Google Calendar with them because they just don’t need that much information on a consistent basis. I also really liked the elegance of this calendar-sharing application. TimeDriver still feels like a bit clunky on the interface but the utility is good.

Since I reviewed Meetwith.me, I’ve already had three meetings scheduled through it, and there’s nothing about it I don’t like so far. However, I found that on the side of the person who wants to schedule times it’s not as easy to use as it could be. For example, one person scheduled an hour time slot even though we both knew the call would be half an hour. It just wasn’t clear to them as a new user how to specify a shorter time block.

As my time is more and more in demand for my business and more and more in demand for my home life (three-year-old, husband), I find that I need a work/life manager. While I’ve been working with a personal assistant, right now I’m still not comfortable using an assistant to handle my scheduling. I still appreciate the more personal touch, and even though using TimeDriver and TimeBridge can be a little geeky, I think it gives people the impressions that a) I’m very busy, and my time is at a premium; and b) I care enough to connect with them that I’ll put them in control of the scheduling so we can find something that works for us both.

Am I wrong about opening these “controlled” and secure calendaring options to others? And shouldn’t I be limiting the number of calls or meetings I have a day? Because I sure do feel overloaded. Maybe I am making myself too accessible. Last year, I was only able to carve out a 4-6 hour workday and could never get anything done. This year, I’ve rearranged a few things, spent a little more money on daycare, and have eked out almost a 7-hour workday, and yet I still find I don’t have enough time in the day. I don’t want to expand my workday hours any further yet still want to be productive. All these calls and meetings getting on my calendar are becoming a burden. And that doesn’t sound like a good thing to me.

So what do you think? How accessible is too accessible? And how do you handle your accessibility?

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