Organizing Meetings with External Invitees
7 minute read
It is important to ensure that when inviting people outside of your company to meetings all logistics and details get into both of your calendars, so everyone remembers to be there and has the information they need. Daylite allows you to add external people as invitees to the appointments you create, sends them an invitation by email, notifies you of their responses, and records their replies in Daylite - keeping everything in one place so nothing falls through the cracks!
The Meeting Invite functionality within Daylite -
Remember - When adding other Daylite users as invitees (internal invitees), they are invited directly with a push notification and the appointment will show in their calendar. They will not receive an invitation by email.
Invite external meeting participants with confidence and ease. Here’s how!
Adding External Invitees and Sending an Invitation Email
Adding Invitees
When creating or editing an appointment in Daylite, you can seamlessly add an external person(s) from outside of your company (someone that is not a Daylite user) as an invitee to the appointment. You can distinguish internal invitees (a) from external invitees (b) from the icon accompanying their name in the appointment card.
Invitee Status Menu
You will see more details and options regarding the invitation of an external invitee by clicking the status text to the right of the invitee token. The following items are shown:
Current invitation status
Sending Invitation, Invitation Sent, Email Not Delivered, etc
Invitee’s name and email address: used for invitation/update emails
Required: mark an invitee's attendance as required/optional
Change Response: manually set response for this invitee
Resend Invitation (or “Send Invitation” if not sent yet)
Required/Optional Invitees
An invitee can be marked as required or optional for a meeting (this is informational only and doesn’t change any functionality). The default is “required," however, this can be changed when adding an invitee or editing an appointment later, by clicking the status text to the right of the invitee token and selecting "Optional". The status text beside an invitee will then show “(Opt)”
Sending Invitations
When you are done editing or creating the appointment, you are prompted to send the invitation email. You can customize this email before sending by editing the subject and message, choosing the language, whether to include the details field, and whether to show the list of invitees to everyone.
(a) If you do not wish to show the invitees, the email will include only the person organizing and the individual person who is receiving the email invitation;
(b) If you select ‘show invitees’, all invitees will be listed at the top.
(c) You may also choose not to send out invitations using the “Don’t Send” button, which you might do if you have already discussed when to meet by some other form of communication such as phone or messaging.
(d) Clicking the “Cancel” button will return you to editing or creating the appointment in case you want to make further adjustments before sending out invitations.
Invitation Email
The invitation email will look like this to the invitee. They can use their calendaring service or application (Outlook, Google, Apple Calendar, etc.) to reply.
Sending Status
The status can be seen for each invitee in the appointment detail card, and will change from (a) “Sending Invitation” to (b) “Invitation Sent” once the email is sent.
If you choose “Don’t Send”, then the status will show as “No Invitation Sent”.
Resend Invitations
On occasion, you may need to resend a meeting invitation to a participant(s).
To resend an invitation to a single invitee, click on the status text to the right of the invitee token, and choose “Resend Invitation…”
If the invitee(s) have not been sent an invitation before, their option changes to “Send” invitation (rather than “Resend”)
To resend invitations to all invitees, click on the “invitees” label in the detail card, and choose “Resend Invitations…”
Sending an Update
When you cancel or make a change to an appointment for which invitations have already been sent, another email may need to be sent to notify those invitees of the changes.
Not all appointment changes require notifying invitees. Minor changes requiring no update could include updating the category or keyword on the appointment, changing the subject or details.
The more major changes that are important to update invitees about are changes that affect the scheduling, such as the date, time, or location.
Requesting New Responses to Updates
Sending updates on major changes to an appointment may require invitees to respond again. In this case, when updating, select the option to “Clear Responses” for any invitees that have already responded.
Update Email
Here is what the update email looks like to the invitee. They can use their calendaring service or application (Outlook, Google, Apple Calendar) to reply.
Sending a Cancellation
Changing the status of an appointment to cancelled/postponed, putting an appointment in the trash, or removing an external invitee, will require an email to notify the invitee(s) that the meeting is cancelled, so you will be prompted to send a meeting cancellation email.
Cancellation Email
Here is what the cancellation email looks like to the invitee.
If the appointment’s end date/time is in the past, an update or cancellation email will not be sent.
Meeting Status Change from Cancelled to Un-Cancelled
When the status of an appointment is changed from cancelled/postponed to any other status, you will be prompted to send a new invitation to the external invitees.
In the case an appointment is restored from the Trash, there will be no prompts regarding this meeting until the appointment is edited again.
Meeting Responses
Response from Invitee
When an external invitee responds to a meeting invitation, their calendar service or application sends a reply to Daylite - resulting in an update to the appointment, indicating the invitee's response of accept/decline/maybe. A push notification will be sent to inform you of the response (a), along with a notification in Daylite (b).
Send Summary
Expanding the invitee status menu allows you to see a summary of the current invitation status. Here are examples of some summaries that are shown:
Invitation emails will be previewed before sending
Sending invitation emails to 3 invitees…
Invitation emails sent to (#) invitees on <date and time>
No invitation emails have been sent
Manually Changing Invitation Response
Sometimes you may receive a response from an external invitee using some other form of communication (ie., phone or messaging) of whether they will be attending or not. In this case, you can manually change the response for that invitee to record it in Daylite. If the invitee later responds using their calendaring application/service, it will be updated in Daylite with their latest response.
Errors
There may be a problem delivering the invitation email, either because the invitee email address does not exist or there is a temporary problem with the invitee’s email account or email server. In this case:
a) The status for the invitee will show “Email Not Delivered”, with more details available by clicking the status
b) A push and Daylite notification will be sent to the owner of the meeting to inform them of the error
c) A suggestion as to how to resolve the problem will be provided, including: resending the invitation, re-adding the invitee with a different email address, or contacting support if necessary
Offline Support
There is full offline support for this feature. Anything meeting related done offline is saved locally and synced when you are back online. Once you have synced, any emails related to meetings will be sent.
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