What is Event Scheduling and How to Do it Right?

Planning for events is a stressful task for most people, whether they’re first-timers or professionals. Without proper event scheduling, even the best-laid plans can fail.

Event scheduling helps you create a roadmap for an event and bring everyone on the same page regarding the event details and their individual contributions.

If you drew the short stick and are responsible for planning an event, this post is for you.

Here, we’ll answer the question “What is event scheduling?” and also tell you how to schedule an event effectively. Let’s get started.

What is Event Scheduling?

In the simplest terms, event scheduling is the process of planning and organizing when and where an event will take place and ensuring everyone involved is ready for it.

It involves setting a date and time for the event, which could be anything from an online meeting to a party or book club gathering. Some other tasks involved are:

• Making a list of people who will be attending the event
• Choosing a date and time when everyone’s available
• Selecting a venue for the event, if it’s an offline event
• Assigning tasks to different people, if required
• Allocating the required resources for the event

Now that you have the answer to “What is event scheduling?” let’s talk about why it’s so important.

What are the Benefits of Effective Event Scheduling?

Here are some of the main benefits of effective event scheduling.

Keeps Things Organized

Proper event scheduling helps keep things organized by creating a clear plan for what will happen, when, and how. It helps create a roadmap for an event, ensuring everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and what to expect.

This provides a clear direction to everyone involved, ensuring things progress as expected.

Here are some ways in which proper event scheduling keeps things organized.

• By communicating roles and responsibilities early on, you can ensure everyone is on the same page and knows exactly what to do.
• Sending invitations early and checking availability ensures that everyone will attend and there won’t be any no-shows.
• You can even set deadlines for various tasks involved, to ensure there’s a clear timeline and tasks are completed on time.

Saves Time and Effort

Imagine scheduling an event where people are confused about their roles and end up making mistakes and improvising on the spot. It would be chaotic right?

Well, proper event planning and scheduling can avoid that.

As mentioned, what event scheduling does is keep things organized and keep everyone clear on what’s expected of them. This keeps everyone focused on their tasks—what they need to do and by when—ensuring there are no mistakes and extra effort.

Additionally, if you use an event scheduling software solution, it will automate certain tasks to further save your time, as an organizer. From automatic event invites to reminders, you can save a lot of time by using the right technology.

Avoids Scheduling Conflicts

One key aspect of proper event scheduling is sending invites early and checking everyone’s availability. This ensures that all the attendees are available for the event and will likely attend it.

This becomes even more critical, given that in-person meetings still dominate and are preferred over virtual or hybrid events.

Another aspect of event scheduling and event management is booking the venue for a specific date and time slot. This makes sure that there are no double bookings and that the venue will be available for the event, without a doubt.

Reduces Unnecessary Stress

Event planning can be stressful, even if you’re a professional. It involves a lot of variables and you are anxious till the last moment that something might go wrong.

Effective event scheduling and planning help reduce some of that stress and anxiety by adding some order to the chaos.

You can avoid some of the most common issues like scheduling conflicts and poor attendance by sending invites and checking availability early on.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of clear communication. By communicating roles and responsibilities and setting a clear timeline, you can also ensure things progress as expected, further reducing stress and any last-minute surprises.

Key Event Scheduling Challenges

Let us be very clear: event scheduling is important for successful event planning and has no cons. What we’ll discuss in this section are some of the challenges you’ll face when scheduling an event.

We’ll also cover ways you can avoid these challenges, so pay attention.

1. Getting a Perfect Attendance

Ensuring a high attendance is one of the key challenges event planners face.

More often than not, it’s extremely difficult to find a time and date when every attendee is available. Unless you’re planning a team meeting and can see everyone’s calendars, it’s next to impossible.

That’s where event scheduling tools like WhenAvailable come in handy. It can help you send multiple options to attendees and ask them to vote on dates and times when they’re available.

The option that gets maximum votes is when you organize the event.

2. Making a Contingency Plan

No matter how well you plan and communicate, unexpected issues will always arise. Factors outside anyone’s control, such as severe weather, technical issues, or equipment malfunctions, can cause delays and disruptions.

The key to successful event scheduling is adaptability and preparation. Develop backup plans for common issues and cultivate a flexible mindset to handle unforeseen changes. This proactive approach will help you navigate challenges smoothly and ensure your event runs as close to plan as possible.

3. Coordinating Across Time-Zones

This is one of the challenges associated with virtual events where you’ve eliminated the need for travel but are catering to a geographically diverse audience across multiple time zones.

The beauty of virtual events is that you can connect with people from all over the world. The challenge, however, is picking a time that’s suitable for all and coordinating with people who are in charge of certain activities that you plan to have during the event.

When you consider the appropriate time for the event, keeping all attendees in mind, you’ll have a very short window. Some or all of the attendees may need to compromise a bit and attend it at a time that’s not the most convenient.

Still, you can make things simpler by simply conducting a vote and giving a few different options. As mentioned earlier, WhenAvailable can help you create such polls that allow people to vote for multiple options that they’re comfortable with.

Creating a poll is quite simple with WhenAvailable, as shown below.

How to Schedule an Event in 5 Steps

Now that you have your answer to the question “What is event scheduling?” let’s understand the steps involved in the process.

1. Make a List of Activities

The first step for effective event scheduling is to decide what you want to do during the event. Make a list of all the activities you plan to do and what you want to accomplish.

This will help you in the next steps of the process because this will determine the duration of the event, roles and responsibilities, and several other details.

It’s a great idea to make a list in chronological order of how you want the event to progress. This will give you more clarity on what the event would look like and you’ll be able to communicate the details to attendees better when you have absolute clarity.

2. Determine the Event Duration

The next step in the event scheduling process is to assign a time for each activity to get a rough ballpark of how long your event will take.

Simply add the expected time for each activity next to it on the list you created in the first step. Then, add up the total to get a rough estimate of the total time required for the event.

Now, add some time for planned breaks and some extra buffer for unexpected situations or any last-minute issues. Add all of it to decide the duration of your event.

3. Pick a Venue, Date, and Time

Venue selection and booking are crucial parts of event scheduling. According to the previously cited American Express report, venue and location play a pivotal role in determining attendees’ event experience. This makes the choice of venue even more important.

Your choice of venue will depend on the type of event, the planned activities, and the number of attendees.

For example, a baby shower with 30 guests would require a very different venue than a book club for five people. The former would require a much larger area with plenty of open space for different games and activities. The latter would simply require a living room with enough space for five people to sit comfortably.

Depending on the various activities you have planned, you may require an indoor or outdoor venue.

After choosing your ideal venue, identify a few suitable time slots for your event. To ensure maximum attendance, we recommend checking participant availability before making the final booking. A good approach is to propose a few potential dates and times to your attendees, allowing them to select the options that work best for them. This collaborative approach streamlines scheduling and boosts participation.

4. Send Invites and Assign Roles

Now it’s time to involve your attendees in the scheduling process. Offer them a selection of date and time options to choose from. This ensures your event is convenient for the majority.

Many event scheduling tools, such as WhenAvailable, simplify this process. You can easily send an invitation with built-in voting functionality, allowing guests to indicate their availability for multiple time slots. The most popular option wins!

Here’s how it works on WhenAvailable:

Once you’ve all agreed on a date and time, book that slot at the venue and send the final event invites. For this, provide the attendees with an option to RSVP and confirm that they will attend the event at the scheduled date and time.

Here’s an example of an event invite with an RSVP option.

If the various attendees have specific tasks they need to complete or activities they need to perform at the event, make sure you convey that clearly. Along with your event invite, send an event schedule of all the planned activities and what’s expected of each guest.

For large events with different people in charge of different activities, you can send out a series of emails communicating everyone’s roles and responsibilities. Don’t forget to include details of what’s expected and by when.

5. Send Event Reminders

Many times, people accept an invite and then forget about it when the event is set to happen. That’s why, sending event reminders is a crucial part of event scheduling.

You can send multiple reminders as the event date approaches.

If you had assigned tasks that needed to be completed before the event, you can send specific reminders to the people responsible for those.

Make sure you don’t spam people’s inboxes with reminders. Typically, 1-2 reminders should be enough to ensure everyone knows when the event is set to happen and where they need to reach.

As mentioned, using a good event scheduling software solution like WhenAvailable will streamline this process and automate many of the tasks involved. So, use the tools at your disposal to make event scheduling as simple as possible.

Tips for Effective Event Scheduling

Here are some strategies to help you master event scheduling and plan events effortlessly.

1. Start Planning as Early as Possible

Speaking from experience, we can confidently say that the sooner you start planning the more smoothly your event will proceed.

Don’t wait till the last minute to book a venue, send invites, and plan activities. The moment you decide to organize an event, start planning.

There is no harm in booking a venue and communicating event details months in advance. However, doing it weeks or days before the event could be stressful and prone to mistakes.

2. Allocate Enough Time for Each Activity

When determining the event duration, it’s very important to allocate enough time for each activity. Remember, things never go as perfectly in real life as they sound on paper. Whatever you think the ideal time is for any activity, add a buffer to account for unexpected events.

Let’s say you kept 15 minutes for a Q&A session at the end of a corporate event. Once people start asking questions, you can’t abruptly stop the session after 15 minutes are over. That’s why, you should have the buffer to adapt to the situation, if needed.

While finishing fifteen minutes early is perfectly acceptable, abruptly ending an event due to time constraints should be avoided whenever possible.

3. Be Flexible with Event Planning and Have a Backup Plan

No matter how well you plan and how perfect your event schedule is, something will inevitably go wrong. People make mistakes, guests turn up late, and things happen that can derail your event schedules.

So what can you do?

Always have a backup plan. Let’s say one of the planned activities could not be done for some reason. Have a list of buffer activities that you can do in its place, on the spot, without any preparation.

Or if there are delays in one activity, you can change your event schedule and perform the next one, instead.

4. Use a Good Event Scheduling Software Solution

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of using the right scheduling tool. It makes the entire process easier and saves you tons of time and effort.

From checking availability and avoiding potential conflicts to sending automated event reminders, a good tool can do a lot to make event scheduling easier.

So choose one that offers all the features you need at an affordable price and use it for effective event scheduling.

5. Always Ask for Feedback After the Event

Lastly, don’t forget to ask for feedback after each event. Even if your event was a massive success, asking for feedback could help you identify things you missed.

Seeking feedback helps you identify areas of improvement and plan better events in the future.

For virtual events, you can simply send a survey via email. For physical events, you can use QR codes to direct people to a survey where they can provide feedback. Or you can simply ask them about their experience in person.

FAQ

1. What is event scheduling?

Event scheduling is simply planning for an event and choosing a place, date, and time for it. It involves coordinating with various participants and checking their availability to ensure everyone’s available to attend the event.

It also requires you to assign tasks, allocate resources, and ensure that everything and everyone is prepped for the event.

2. Why is event scheduling important?

Event scheduling is important because it ensures everything runs smoothly and on time. It helps you:

• Stay organized because everyone knows what to expect and are prepared for it
• Save time on last-minute firefighting as everything will be streamlined
• Communicate effectively to everyone involved about their roles and responsibilities
• Avoid conflicts of the time, ensuring the venue is not double-booked and all attendees are available for the event
• Run a successful event without any challenges or setbacks

3. What is event scheduling software?

It’s a tool that helps people plan and schedule various events by checking everyone’s availability and booking a slot that suits everyone. Such software should be able to:

• Invite attendees to events via links or other methods
• Allow event organizers to change the dates and times for various events
• Provide a way for people to confirm their availability for the booked slot
• Sync with various calendar tools to create a seamless experience

These are, of course, the essentials, but they are not a comprehensive list of features an event scheduling solution should have.

4. Why do you need event scheduling software?

An event scheduling software solution streamlines the scheduling process, saving you time and effort. It helps check availability, avoid conflicts, and book time slots without hassle. Here are some benefits of an event scheduling solution.

• Automates tasks like event invitations and reminders to save time and effort
• Avoids double-booking or scheduling conflicts and checks attendees’ availability
• Organizes all event details, from attendees to tasks involved, in one place
• Sends reminders to attendees to ensure everyone is present at the event
• Streamlines the entire process, especially for large events with numerous attendees

5. How can you master event scheduling?

Understanding the key elements involved and using a good event scheduling software solution can help you schedule events successfully. Another crucial aspect is starting the process early, so you have enough time to plan things and coordinate with all the attendees.

You should also allocate sufficient time, including buffer time, for each activity when calculating event duration. This will help you create a flexible event schedule that you can modify in case there are some last-minute changes.

Ready to Master Event Scheduling and Organize Successful Events?

Hopefully, you now have the answer to your question “What is event scheduling?” and understand the various steps involved in the process.

Use the strategies listed in this article to master event scheduling and organize successful events with perfect attendance.

Don’t forget to use an event scheduling tool like WhenAvailable to check attendee availability and choose the best dates and times for your events. Good luck!