Networking 101: Five Overlooked Tips for Sending Better Calendar Invitations

You’d think that sending calendar invites from Outlook, GMail, etc., would be a simple process, but over the years (and hundreds of invites, both sent and received) I’ve found that paying a little more attention to them can yield significant benefits.  Herewith is my not-so-complete primer on the art and science of calendar invitations.

1. Your invitation is NOT for you, it’s for someone else: Part 1.  This may sound overly simplistic – of course an invitation is for someone else – but you’d be surprised how often I get invitations that say “Meeting at Office” or something similar.  So your invitation, on my calendar, now says “Meeting at Office”.  Whose office, mine? Yours?  Please be more specific.

2. Your invitation is NOT for you, it’s for someone else: Part 2.  Keep in mind that your invitation is going to appear in someone else’s calendar.  Also keep in mind that calendars are increasingly viewed in the text-constrained format of smartphones and tablets. Therefore you should title the invitation in such a way that it will have an at-a-glance significance on your invitee’s calendar.  For example, if I’m sending an invitation to John Smith for a meeting in his office, I will title it “Onsite: Mark Hall / John Smith.”  This way Mr. Smith will instantly see that he has a meeting with me at his office.

3. Location, location, location.  All calendar programs have a location field. Use it. If the meeting is at the invitee’s office, look it up in your contact manager and cut-and-paste the address into the meeting location field.  If the invitee is coming to you, enter your own address in the location field.  This is useful for two reasons:

• The location address is available right there in the invitation, making it easy to find if you are (like me) geographically challenged and frequently dependent on GPS to get you where you are going.  Same is true in reverse if your invitee is coming to you.
• Even if you confirm the location at the time you set the meeting, it helps limit mistakes in where the meeting is to take place. Many times an invitee has called me after receiving my invitation and looking at the location field to say things like “We’ve moved; here’s our new address.” or “I’ve reserved a meeting room in building B, so don’t come to Building A when you get here.”

4. Too much information is never enough.  Sometimes I set up meetings weeks in advance. When the appointed time rolls around, is it reasonable to expect an invitee to remember why we are meeting, even if we discussed the particulars when we set up the meeting weeks ago?  Of course not.  When you create the invitation, be specific.  All calendar programs have a large space for a description, so use it. List the topics to be discussed and (if you like) the expected outcomes and next steps.  Also list any “homework” or information that should be gathered prior to the meeting. You may also want to use the description field to “introduce” invitees that may not know each other, by including a list of them and their titles.  (Of course the invitees’ email addresses are always visible, but in most cases they are not very descriptive.)

5. Confirm.  Always.  Get in the habit of confirming appointments the day before, by phone and/or email.  I find that many people in the IT world use email as an extended form of text messaging since they get their email on their phones, so a short one-line confirmation request is usually the easiest.  If you are unable to reach the invitee to confirm, try resending your invitation.

So there it is, my short, admittedly incomplete primer on the art & science of calendar invitations.  You may think I’m obsessing a bit too much over this, and you are entitled to your opinion, but I’m here to tell you it is no fluke that my calendar-related issues have been drastically reduced by following these simple guidelines.  Hope this helps!