I frequently use the “create meeting from message” feature. I could go on and on about ways to improve it (Gmail does a really good job at creating calendar events from an email), here’s just one change that I think would be simple to implement.
As it is now, entering the date is great (date picker FTW), but entering the time is a pain! To set a meeting time, I have to do a lot of switching back and forth between keyboard and mouse…or else do a lot of clicking (to switch fields, then more to adjust the time by way of the up/down arrows). I can type in a time, but this also takes a while, since I need to keep jumping from the number keys to the arrow keys.
Suggestions to make this easier:
- Leave the hour and minute fields blank to start with (what is the likelihood that my next meeting is going to start at the exact moment that I enter it in my calendar?)
- Instead of using three separate fields for hour, minute, and AM/PM, join them into one dropdown selector with common times (8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30).
- Or use individual dropdowns for hour, minute, and AM/PM. This is a little more clicking, but still less than going minute-by-minute with an arrow button.
- Keep the option to type in a time as an alternative to dropdown selection