Comment by Lightbody | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lightbody | Hacker News Reader

I can definitely relate to the point being made here: my startup (https://reclaim.ai) does various calendar automation. We see a number of users sign up for our service after having tried Zapier to solve their problem.

Not only is the UX more complex to get the job done, stuff like what we're doing (ex: personal->work calendar sync) is more complex than you think and simple "if this then that" types of workflows start to break down.

We have nothing against Zapier (heck I'm a user for some stuff). But there are definitely things it is ill-suited for, despite having an amazing marketing engine that can capture a very long tail of search terms due to the NxM nature of their product.

"Fun" fact: one of our users recently found us after screwing up his calendar sync Zap and, on a random Sunday morning, ended up inviting thousands of his coworkers to dozens of duplicate meetings, all from his personal Gmail account. It was his fault (his Zap had several errors in it), but in the end he was much better served by a dedicated solution.

I think the author's advice is spot on: there are opportunities in making better solutions for popular Zaps. Just please don't do anything in the calendar space ;)

This, I’m convinced UX is the main source of trust for a software business, and managing the solution’s complexity is a core part of that.

My team at FAANG uses reclaim.ai pretty heavily to protect our calendars from corporate bs. We find it easy to maximize our time for working and being in the zone. Other FAANG or startup engineers would find this product useful to auto optimize their schedules. Especially if they find their calendars sprinkled with meetings with small gaps of free time in the day. I like to block off my afternoons as personal dev/work time.

Reclaim Assistant is free through January 2021, give it a shot. Reign in those Zoom calls that break your concentration throughout the day.

I just looked at Reclaim. That's exactly what I tried to do by creating a Google account just to join together 6 other calendars, and that's the calendar I sync to my phone (it works but... meh. definitely a hack. For example, the annual holiday calendar is repeated about 18 times somehow).

Definitely taking a serious look at Reclaim.

As some who occasionally has to gather small groups (~5 people) --we all work remotely (pre-covid too), so one can't just swing around the corner-- I would be quite bothered to find my colleagues booked every last minute of their time, such that it would become impossible to schedule 30 minutes sometime in the next 2 weeks. Especially knowing that this was used, I would then have to ping everyone and see if they actually are free at such-and-such a time. I suppose that's the tool's intent.

Everyone should block off 1-2 hours a day for themselves. Consistently blocking your entire day could slow down the organization, if meetings are a place for reaching consensus and decision-making.

> I suppose that's the tool's intent.

Quite the opposite in fact: we built this for manager-types who have many meetings and for the very reason you cited need to appear available.

It purposely makes the slots of time that we book “free” until the day is too full, and only then changes it to busy.

The result is that my calendar, for example, appears free from 11am to 2pm, but if suddenly that time starts filling up, some time (30-60 mins by default) gets held for lunch.

In other words: it does exactly as you prescribe (blocks off 1-2 hours), except without the rigidity of fixed events, making it easier for people like you to call (hopefully good) meetings.

Give it a try!

> It purposely makes the slots of time that we book “free” until the day is too full, and only then changes it to busy.

https://blog.reclaim.ai/posts/2020-03-30-dear-hr-are-your-te...

The lunch use case animation might be a simpler way of conceptually explaining the product, just my 2 cents. Thanks for clarifying there.

Corner case: let's continue the idea of a flex lunch of 30 minutes between 11:30 and 2pm. If my work calendar has no events, and someone schedules a meeting from exactly 11:30 to 2pm, does it automatically reject? The person scheduling that meeting would've thought my schedule was free because the time was marked free, since the flex lunch time is only "claimed" once I'm down to 30 minutes of unscheduled time between 11:30 and 2pm.

My personal intent of blocking this 30 minute slot is never publicly visible on the work calendar, since it has no concept of that.

It sounds like Google Calendar (or whatever meeting software companies use) needs to build in these sort of features, since there's no way to do so. Reclaim helps, but if I'm booking my meeting within Google Calendar, and some of my meeting participants use Reclaim, I can't see the sorts of constraints participants are setting on their time.

Re: your corner case... Currently we defer to the incoming invite and remove the block IF you accept the 2.5+ meeting invite the overlaps. One exception: if the invite happens to mention lunch is being served we auto remove it. In the future we will likely offer the option to auto reject, but we don’t today.

Re: your other comments, you are right that the core platform (mostly dictated by the iCal standard) cause some of the limits on these workflows. But we designed Reclaim to do most (all?) of what you’d expect both for you (a Reclaim user) and others (non-Reclaim users who just stick on the core platform).

Try it out :)

What this post taught me, is that there's plenty of room for solutions in the calendars space.

KIDDING!! 100% spot on your analysis though and a real-world anecdote of the unbundling concept.

It's early here and I am drawing a blank...what is "NxM nature"? Promise I wont do anything in the calendar space.

LOL I just mean like N integrations that work with M other integrations produces a ton of use cases (“Zaps”) that capture search terms.

Any plans for an API?

Hmm... what kind of stuff would you want? I’m not opposed to opening it up.

My side gig is a fitness company, and we have a very basic scheduling service, and it would be great to white label a calendering solution.

Also, my day job, we may need to help schedule very busy surgeons.

If you're interested, please email me: alan AT_SYMBOL expertopinion PERIOD md

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