How-To: Schedule A Conference Using Google Calendar

Thanks to the global ubiquity of the telephone, conference calls remain one of the most effective ways to communicate amongst a distributed team.

While there are several ways to schedule a ZipDX conference call, in some cases the easiest way is to leverage one of the tools that you already use every day.

Most business people spend considerable time engaged with their email client and electronic calendar, so for Google Docs users, we thought it only sensible that they should be able to schedule a conference call quickly and easily from Google Calendar.

Who Can Schedule a Conference?

Anyone registered with ZipDX who has been given “Organizer” rights can schedule a conference call. The email address you use with your Google account must be included in your ZipDX profile. If required, you can have several email addresses in your ZipDX profile.

Now here’s how it’s done!

Scheduling The Conference

• In Google Calendar click on the Create Button to begin the process.

• Setup the meeting as you would for any normal meeting.
  • (1) Give it an informative Subject.
  • (2) Set the Start Date & Time.
  • (3) Set the End Date & Time.
  • (4) In the Description put whatever information would be helpful to the meeting participants.
  • (5) Add the meeting participants using the Add guests tool.
  • (6) Finally, add ZipDX to the meeting by inviting meeting@cal.zipdx.com to the meeting.
• Click SAVE to create the meeting.
• You’ll be prompted about sending invitations as shown below.

• Be sure to click on Send so that everyone, including ZipDX, receives a meeting invitation.

Why It’s Important to Add ZipDX as a “Meeting Participant”

Adding ZipDX as a meeting participant (#6 above) is the critical part. It’s that step that makes Google Docs and ZipDX work seamlessly together.

ZipDX receives the meeting invitation just like everyone else you invited. That message includes everything the system needs to schedule the conference call.

In the time it takes you to return to your GMail inbox ZipDX has already scheduled the call.

If you were to log into the ZipDX web portal you’d see the new conference listed in your Pending Conferences.

What Do Participants Receive?

Each person invited to the conference receives two messages:

1. The first message is from you, the direct result of creating the meeting. It contains the various details that you included in your Google Calendar entry.

2. The second email comes from ZipDX. This message is customized for each participant. It contains details for connecting to the conference by telephone.

It also contains a link allowing them to access the ZipDX web portal, which is how they would view any WebShare content.

Modifying The Conference

The meeting item in your Google calendar is effectively the master copy of the meeting details. If you need to modify the meeting, perhaps to reschedule, add or remove participants, this is accomplished by editing the meeting in your Google calendar.

When a change has been made to the meeting Calendar will again prompt with respect to sending meeting updates as shown below.  It’s critical that you allow it to send meeting updates to all participants.

This ensures that a meeting update is sent to ZipDX, so the system can make the necessary changes in the ZipDX conference. It ensures that ZipDX stays in sync with the meeting as it appears in your Google Calendar.

Recurring Conferences

Within Google Calendar you can also setup repeating meetings. This is a meeting that recurs on a consistent schedule. It could be a weekly project meeting, a monthly staff meeting, or even a daily stand-up meeting.

When such a recurring meeting is setup, with ZipDX included as described above, the system will automatically schedule all of the conferences necessary to match the schedule created in Calendar.

As before, if there’s any change in the meeting schedule you must ensure that Calendar sends updates to all participants. This will ensure that the conferences scheduled in ZipDX are always an exact match for the schedule you see in Google Calendar.

Note that it’s also possible to schedule a recurring conference via the ZipDX web portal. That approach inverts the flow of information, making ZipDX the source of meeting details, which get emailed to participants. The meeting invitations contain a calendar object (iCal) that allow the conferences to appear in their Outlook or Google calendars.

Summary

ZipDX makes it easy for people to schedule conference calls from the comfortable and familiar environment of Google Docs. The power and flexibility of Google Calendar makes it straightforward to coordinate the availability of key participants and distribute meeting details.

Questions?

If you have questions about any aspect of ZipDX please contact our support team at:

• 1-888-947-3955,
• Or, +1-312-348-8175,
• Or, email support@zipdx.com.

We’re here to help you get down to business.