1. Plan the meeting date and time.
By using the ICS Committees website forums with Doodle, you can schedule a meeting time and date that suits as many of your committee's members as possible. A workflow using these tools is demonstrated in this video.
This example shows Ashani scheduling a meeting of the ICS Children and Young Adults Committee. Doodle.com allows users to create free accounts. Once Ashani has signed in, she creates a new Group Poll. To get started, she just needs to provide a meeting title, followed by up to 20 date and time options in her time zone. This poll can then be shared using a link.
After signing into the ICS website, Ashani looks up the committees she's a member of by clicking on her profile photo. The committee homepage provides access to each committee's forums. A new topic can be added to the list of existing forum topics. Ashani includes a title and a short description including the link to the Doodle poll. When "Notify participants" is checked, a message is sent to all committee members. You can also include the link to the Doodle poll here. The new forum topic appears at the top.
Marcus checks his inbox, finds the link to the Doodle poll, and selects the slots when he's available to meet. The ICS website will also notify committee members about forum activity. These can be accessed by clicking on their profile photo, where a red badge indicates the number of new notifications.
Several committee members indicate their availability through the Doodle poll. Doodle notifies Ashani of this activity. Using the poll results, she selects a date and time when the most committee members are available. Returning to the committee forum topic, she posts a comment stating the meeting date and time.
2. Send calendar event invites
Calendar events can be created using Outlook or Google Calendar with invitations sent to participants according to their local time zones.
In Outlook's calendar section, double clicking on the planned date opens the "new event" window. Ashani adds the meeting title. The time can be set in her local time zone by unchecking "All day".
ICS provides a Zoom meeting room for each of its committees, which can be accessed on the respective committee's homepage. The link is copied and then pasted into the Location field of the event.
Next, attendees are added. Upon clicking "Invite attendees", the "Required" field appears. On the committee homepage, Ashani clicks the email icon to create an email to all committee members. The email addresses are copied, and then pasted into the "Required" field. It is now time to send the event invitation.
Google Calendar's "Event Details" window opens after double clicking on the planned date. The meeting title is added. When "All day" is unchecked, Ashani can set the event time according to her local time zone. Again, the Zoom Meeting Room link is used as the location. The list of email addresses is pasted into the guests field. The guests will be invited when the event is saved.
Whether Outlook or Google Calendar is used, committee members will receive their invitations for their local times and dates. When they accept the invitation, the meeting will be added to their calendar.