Three minutes for the poll, a week for the rest
Tuesday evening, six people, one date to find. The poll is written in three minutes, the link goes out, and by Thursday the answer is there: Saturday the nineteenth, five yes, one maybe.
And then?
Somebody copies the date into a calendar. Somebody writes round to say it is fixed. Somebody remembers that the room still needs booking, and somebody else had promised to bring the projector – agreed in the same email thread, four replies further down.
The poll answered its question and closed. Everything that follows from the answer is done by hand.
What a date poll does well, and where it stops
Doodle is known for one thing and does it in a way that needs no explaining: it asks a group when it can, and it shows the answer. That is why everybody recognises it, and it is a perfectly good reason to use it.
Where it stops is not a flaw, it is the shape of the thing. A date poll is a page for a single question. It does not know why you are meeting, it does not know what has to be ready by then, and once the winning row is highlighted it has done its job.
The poll solves the first step. The second one is not solved by anybody, so it comes back to you.
For a group that meets once, that is the right size of tool. For a committee, a team or a client who will meet again in six weeks, it means starting from nothing every time.
The same question, but inside a project
Projoodle asks it the same way, with the same three answers: yes, maybe, no. Propose up to thirty dates, with times from and until where you need them, and the proposal with the most acceptances is highlighted as the votes come in. That part is not the difference.
The difference is where the poll is standing. It is not a page of its own. It sits in a project, next to the tasks, the files and the people the meeting is actually about. How it works step by step is on the polls page.
The winner becomes an appointment, with the people already in it
When you close the poll, the winning date does not stay behind on a results page. One click puts it into the project calendar as a real appointment – date, time, and everyone who said yes, already entered.
Nothing is copied across, because nothing needs to be. The information was already there. The people who answered maybe come along too; the ones who declined do not.
From then on it behaves like any other appointment. It can have a place and a description, the invitation goes out when you send it and not a second earlier, and if the meeting falls through, the people who were counting on it are told.
A group asks two kinds of question
When can everyone – and which one do we take? The second question comes up as often as the first, and it is the same poll with different answers.
Instead of dates you give the options: the restaurant, the supplier, the two logo drafts. One vote per person, or multiple choice when the answers are not exclusive. The result grows as a bar, and beside each answer stands who chose it.
If you allow it, the participants can add options of their own – a date you did not think of, a third restaurant. Anyone can take their own suggestion back, as long as nobody else has voted on it.
Every vote carries a name
Each participant gets their own link and answers under their own name. Nothing is anonymous, and that is deliberate: with a date you rarely want to know how many can come. You want to know who cannot.
It also makes the reminder precise. Projoodle knows who has not answered yet and offers exactly those people – not the whole list – when you send one. Whoever has voted is left in peace.
And no mail goes out by itself. A freshly written poll is rarely finished, and an email cannot be recalled, so sending is a separate step that you trigger.
What is still there afterwards
This is the part a stand-alone poll cannot have. Whatever comes out of the meeting stays in the same place as the poll that arranged it: the to-do list with who is doing what by when, the files, the questions as comments on the task they belong to. When several things run at once, the board shows what is moving and what is not.
Six weeks later the next date is found in the same project, in front of the same list. Nobody reconstructs anything.
What that looks like on a club committee is in What the minutes say, nobody has done yet. With clients rather than colleagues: Sharing tasks with clients without an account.
Where it stops
So that it is clear what this is not:
- Participants are entered, not self-served. You add the people, and each one gets their own personal link. There is no single link to drop into a group chat for thirty strangers to type their name into. That is the price of votes that carry a name.
- Nothing is anonymous. For a secret ballot this is the wrong tool.
- No look into your own calendar. Projoodle does not read your Google or Outlook availability and does not propose dates from it. You propose, the group answers.
- Free has limits. Two projects, up to five participants per project, one poll running at a time, three appointments in the calendar. Close a poll and the slot is free again. Beyond that it takes Projoodle PRO.
When a switch is worth it
The question is not which tool finds a date faster. Both find it.
The question is whether your group meets again. If it is a one-off with people you will not see again, a date poll on its own is exactly the right size, and there is no reason to change anything.
If it is the same committee, the same team, the same client – if you are arranging a meeting so that something can be decided, divided up and then actually done – then the date is not the result. It is the beginning, and it should land somewhere it can carry on.
In short
A date poll ends at the moment it becomes useful. The date is found, and the work of turning it into an appointment, a list and a group of people who know about it starts from scratch.
Projoodle asks the same question and keeps the answer. The winner goes into the calendar with the people in it, the tasks stay beside it, and the next poll is written in the same project.
No account for anyone taking part, nothing to install, no advertising. Start a poll and see how far it carries you.
