I have an assistant who is a robot. Yes, a George-Jetson-kinda robot. Her name is Amy, and she schedules meetings for me. She deals with the “Tuesday at 3 doesn’t work. How about Friday at 10” back-and-forth that drives me insane.
I love her.
Amy is the amazing work of the folks at x.ai. They built a simple AI software that “eases the pain of scheduling”, and it’s frankly a game-changer. It’s simple to set up and easy to use. Once you create an account, you choose your bot, either Amy or Andrew, and connect your calendars. I use Google Calendar and it took just a few clicks to get it all connected.
Having access to your calendar allows Amy to see your existing appointments and work around them. You can also set the following general preferences to aid in her scheduling:
- Meeting Types – Have different types of meetings like phone consults, in-person kickoffs, or coworker socials? Amy allows you to identify different types of meetings with their own settings.
- Conference Information – Have a conference line already set up? Use Zoom to handle virtual meetings? Indicate your account information so it’s always included in the details.
- Meeting Locations – Have a good spot to grab
coffee - Scheduling Hours – Only want to schedule in-person meetings in the afternoon? Better at taking consultations in the morning? Want to be left alone before 10 am? Set specific scheduling hours for different days or types of meetings and be scheduled when you want. You can also customiz the duration of meetings and whether you want breathing room between them.
- Out of Office or Travel – Not going to be available at the end of May? Traveling in a couple of weeks? Indicate your out-of-office days so Amy won’t schedule you during them.
To use Amy, you simply CC her on an email with the meeting participants and indicate the information about the meeting. For example, in an email to Erika about getting coffee, you’d write, “Amy, schedule coffee with Erika sometime next week,” and Amy takes it from there. She’ll email you back when the meeting is confirmed and adds it to your calendar. She’ll even send participants reminders so you reduce the risk of no-shows.
While I adore Amy now, I have to admit, I was hesitant to use her at first. The thought of giving up any sort of control over my calendar gave me heart palpitations. But once I realized all the preferences I could customize so that Amy worked for me and all my quirkiness, it was a no-brainer. I’ve never had an issue when she’s scheduled something, and the time and headache she’s saved me has eclipsed my previous concerns.
Best of all, Amy is really affordable! And if you click here to sign up, you’ll get your first month free! In full disclosure, this promo is part of a referral program, so I do receive a small bonus when you sign up. But even if I didn’t, I would still tell you all about Amy, because she’s amazing and one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my business.
Plus, she’s a freaking robot, and that’s just cool.
Meet George Jetson…
How much time do you waste scheduling meetings? Is it one less thing you’d like to deal with?
