Tungle tames the scheduling jungle by allowing Outlook users to coordinate meetings easily with anyone, even users of iCal, Google Calendar and Lotus Notes
MONTREAL, April 16, 2008 – For anyone who has ever had to face the headache and inefficiencies of scheduling a meeting using Outlook, relief is here.
Tungle, an upstart Montreal-based Web 2.0 software company and DEMOgod award winner, has launched its free beta pilot that eliminates the time drain and frustration of e-mailing back and forth and phone tag to schedule meetings among many busy people.
Tungle is a free service that dynamically allows users to see and share schedule availability without exposing the specific details of their existing appointments. It’s a big-time timesaver for small business professionals, sales professionals, head hunters, administrators, information workers, meeting planners, project managers and all who need to schedule meetings for themselves, or others.
"Scheduling and coordinating meetings in today’s information-driven world is a huge headache,” said Chris Shipley, chairman of analyst firm Guidewire Group and executive producer of the DEMO conferences. "Tungle meets a genuine market need by fixing a very real and very time-consuming problem. It is a useful and practical tool that will greatly improve productivity for busy professionals.”
What is Tungle?
To make Tungle the scheduling application of choice when it launches on all platforms later this year, the company released today a full-featured solution for Microsoft Outlook users, both with or without Exchange. Microsoft Office, the most widely installed Office Suite, has a commanding installed base of 550 million users around the world.
Using Tungle, Outlook users can now share their free/busy calendars with any other Tungle user, across and between corporations, firewalls and timezones. Sharing availability is as easy as adding a user to an instant messaging platform. For small businesses, Tungle can save the pain and cost of installing an Exchange server and existing Exchange users can extend their corporate functionality outside the corporate firewall.
“Sharing free/busy calendars is the first step toward helping users easily coordinate meetings,” said Marc Gingras, CEO and founder of Tungle. “We have always been amazed at how complicated and costly existing solutions can be. Tungle brings simplicity and savings to this process. Our second step was then to leverage the availability of users to build the ultimate scheduling tool. We call it Tungle Spaces.”
Tungle Spaces is the easiest way to coordinate meetings with anyone, across platforms – including iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, etc. – organizations, time zones and even with people who are not using Tungle.
Tungle users select and highlight available timeslots in their calendars to share them with meeting invitees on a temporary webpage called the Tungle Space. As time passes, Tungle automatically updates the organizers’ availability as their calendars fill up, thus eliminating the need for constant e-mail “ping pong” and the likelihood of double booking a meeting. Meeting invitees access this webpage and can update their availability or book the meeting.
“Our closed beta users have raved about the simplicity of coordinating meetings with Tungle Spaces. Some have even called it addictive,” said Gingras. “It takes them five seconds to create the Tungle Space and then they just sit back and let Tungle do the work. Before they know it, Tungle informs them that the meeting is booked and their calendars are automatically updated.”
Tungle is a full-featured solution. Key features include:
• One-click free/busy calendar sharing within and across organizations, firewalls, and networks
• Tungle Space to coordinate meetings with anyone, non-Tungle users on iCal, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes and any other calendaring platform
• Automatic time zone detection
• Automatic meeting invitations in the groupware format familiar to each invitee
• Create Tungle Spaces with the availability of colleagues and co-workers pre-populated
• Coordinate meetings between individuals, without taking part in the meeting (i.e., Admin Assistant)
• Full integration with Outlook scheduling tools, including AutoPick Next and Free/Busy view in Outlook scheduling pane
• Update and History tracking
• Tungle Space management
• Multiple e-mail account support
• Latest security and encryption techniques including public key encryption, digital signatures and symmetric encryption algorithms
The Tungle Beta Pilot
“Our goal with the Tungle beta pilot is to make Tungle reflect the unique and slightly different needs that users of each calendaring program have, so we address them when Tungle is made generally available later this year,” said Gingras. “We decided to not limit our beta to a number of users. Anyone who wants it can get it. We figured the more people use it, the more feedback we will get to fine-tune our solution for the Google Calendar and MAC platforms.”
How To Start Using Tungle
Available now, the Tungle Outlook plug in takes less than 30 seconds to install (http://www.tungle.com). It automatically synchronizes with users’ Outlook address books and calendars, eliminating any configuration or complicated setup. This information is kept secure and locally on the user’s machine; it is not uploaded or shared with anyone else or with Tungle. Its IM-like user interface makes it easy for users to understand and start coordinating meetings in seconds.
# # #
About Tungle
Founded in 2006, Tungle is the company that makes meeting coordination fast and easy. It reduces the amount of communication required to find a suitable meeting time among many, allowing anyone to share calendar views of availability without exposing preexisting meetings. Tungle is the first meeting coordinator to work across organizations, independent of the calendar or groupware system(s) used. Its inherent speed, privacy and native communication with groupware clients makes it an ideal, free alternative for small offices that don’t have the desire or resources to invest in an Exchange or Domino server. Headquartered in Montreal, Tungle is funded by leading Canadian investors. For more information, visit www.tungle.com.
