Scheduling around the world: www.doodle.com
As of today, Doodle is accessible at www.doodle.com. The new domain does not change any of Doodle’s current services, but emphasizes its international orientation. Doodle is already available in 25 languages and supports scheduling across time zones. The language, in which Doodle is displayed to the users, is selected automatically according to their personal browser settings.
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I was wondering if your polls were accessible to assistive technology (screen readers, etc). When I did a check of your sample page I found that there were no labels on your form fields. If this issue is resolved I’d be likely to use this software. Great concept!
Bonnie, thanks for your comment. We’ll certainly look into this in the future.
Speaking of I18n: One thing you really should look into is the 12 hour clock confusion about noon and midnight. Your “12pm” could easy be mistaken for midnight (as in “12 hours past noon”).
@Helge
Thanks for your feedback. Interesting point. Although in the U.S. 12am stands for midnight and 12pm for noon. The average user wouldn’t be familiar with the definitions from Wikipedia. We will add your feedback to our todo list and investigate it further in the future.
Thanks,
Reto
I see from this post that language is selected automatically according to the user’s personal browser settings. Can someone tell me whether that applies for time zone support as well? If not, how does Doodle select a time zone for users? I just had someone log in and the site read her time zone as Zurich though she is in DC – does this mean her computer is set to Zurich time?
@Rachel
Doodle doesn’t use the same mechanism to select a timezone. What we do is mapping your computer’s IP address to the geo location’s timezone. If that person is connected to the internet from DC, Doodle will select the DC timezone. (I think that’s EST?). But if that person travels to Zurich and opens a Doodle from here it will pick Zurich timezone.
Since you say the person opened the Doodle from DC but it still picked the Zurich timezone, then there must have been a problem resolving her IP address to the corresponding time zone.
Can you please ask her to retry and see whether it happens again?
Thanks,
Reto
When setting this up, I entered times (in my time zone – Eastern U.S.) and sent the participant link to someone in San Diego. The times did not convert to Pacific Time. How do I get this to work? I’m trying to schedule an international teleconference.
@SCK:
Did you enable timezone support when setting up your poll? On the wizard page, where you enter the times, there is a link called “Timezone support”. Click on that the next time you setup a poll and the participants will automatically see the suggested times in their timezones.
Remark: Once your poll is created, you can’t enable/disable timezone support anymore. You will have to recreate your poll.
I wonder if it’d be possible to clarify the timezone link? It says “with time-zone support” and it’s not clear if you need to click this link to get timezone support or whether timezone support is turned on by default (and therefore clicking the link turns it off). It might be good if the link said (for example), “click for time-zone support” or “time-zone support is not enabled, click here the enable it.”
Since you can’t change the timezone support feature once the poll is created it might be good to say that explicitly.
@ Brian Cashman,
Thanks for the feedback. Fully agree with you. We’ll have it fixed in one of our upcoming releases.
Reto
Once one has created a schedule poll, neither the participant nor the administrator can tell if the poll has time zone support or not. There should be a note indicating the time zone.
In addition when someone is filling out the poll at one geographical location (time zone) for a future event in which they will have re-located to another location (time zone), it would be useful for the participant to select the time zone that they would like to respond in.
@Dennis Coyne,
Thanks for your feedback. We do show a timezone drop-down list once timezone support is enabled. This should give enough indication that timezone support is active. For each participant, it will automatically select the right timezone. At anytime you can manually change the timezone and the poll options will change accordingly.
Hope that helps.
Reto
P.S. Some more info on timezone support
http://doodle.com/about/faq.html#timezonesupport
http://doodle.com/about/faq.html#timezoneselection
It would seem to make more sense to list the time zone next to the times. THen there would never be any confusion. 11:00 AM (EST) is unambiguous to the creator and users of the poll. 11:00 AM with a dropdown in the upper right corner is not nearly as much so.
@Scott,
Thanks for the feedback. I see your point. Though we really want to make the table as compact as possible. Appending the timezone to each time option would blow up the table-width tremendously.
BTW: Have you tried our new design? Open a poll link and click on “Try our new design (BETA)” on the upper right corner. You still think it’s a problem?
Best,
Reto
I love Doodle except for one feature – and that is the way it automatically sets the timezone. For me it always comes up with “America/Rainy River” – I have no idea where “Rainy River” is in America, so I have no idea whether the times listed are in my time zone or not. Also I use polls with government folks from all across U.S. who’s IP addresses don’t always match their physical location. Result is always somebody who entered the wrong times for a poll.
I think setting the timezone based on an IP address is just too prone to error and confusion. You need to find a more robust solution. Perhaps you ask a user the first time for their timezone and then store it as a cookie? Also show it more prominently right beside the times they enter?
The timezone setting is awful. I clicked yes to timezone support; within the poll I have it set to Toronto time; all of the subscribers IP addresses (including mine) are set to the same timezone. And yet the poll is defaulting to the dreaded Rainy River/America. What gives? THis makes no sense.