UPDATE: To Doodle or not to Doodle? The introduction of Google 'Forms'

I said I would try both. Doodle works much better than Forms. That being said I need to state why.

The task of Doodle is very very specific. It is much more intuitive than forms for the purpose of setting up a meeting.

Forms has more potential power, but requires a bit of tweaking to read updated data and that time I do not have.

Doodle wins out in that it has a specific function in mind and executes this function intuitively and simply.

Nice work Doodle from Inturico Engineering!


Original Post



I have been using Doodle to set up and organize meetings. It has been an amazing tool. Now Google offers an alternate solution with potentially more flexibility.

Doodle helps you create a poll that can be sent out via email. Those getting the email receive a link to a specially prepared webpage where they can enter data simply by clicking check boxes. The person who set up the poll gets email updates on who has answered the poll. Here's a sample poll from Doodle.

I have been using Doodle to schedule meetings. I have to give a lot of time and date options because my participants are busy teachers with very very different work schedules. This means I have a long page running horizontally off into the horizon. This is where Doodle breaks a little. There are times I need to print out the results. This is fine if there are only a few dates and times, but not for what I need to have. Printing options are not available.

Perhaps Google forms can do this?

Here's what Google says about Google Forms:

We're really excited to bring you forms! Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you'll get the spreadsheet automatically.

Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet.

You then can view the updates.

I am going to test Google forms specifically for it's printing options and general usability.

I will get back to you in a update. For now, go ahead and play with both and see how they might be useful to your workflow.

Doodle

Google Forms