Amy (the humanized name of the X.ai bot) is about the worst and most intrusive business tool I've encountered. My business partner uses the "amy" bot. It likes to spam me with 20 questions about when to schedule a meeting, each time asking me for other times whenever something doesn't work. And god help me if I ever forget to put an "IST" after every single time I mention. If I send it "8PM IST, 9PM IST or 10PM", there is a good chance it will give me a 10PM EST meeting.
In contrast, consider doodle (http://doodle.com/), which is exactly the GUI you are imagining. It shows me a grid of possible times. I click the times that are good. It detects my location and automatically displays times in IST. Takes me about 15 seconds to use with no confusion.
X.ai seems to be solving the problem of "I wish I had a secretary, but can't afford one". That's not the same problem as "lets schedule meetings in the most efficient way possible".
Dear x.ai folks, if any of you are reading this thread: please clone doodle and stick an x.ai/doodle link into the amy emails. If you do this, I'll consider deleting the gmail filter which currently blocks all emails from x.ai.
Doodle is interesting, thanks for mentioning them. But I was exploring their product and come to find they list SSL as a paid feature on their "Private" plan. SSL is really, truly not a paid feature. I found that off-putting and a bit shameful.
True, you need to pay them a shocking 2.5 euros/month in order to access all the important features (calendar integration, SSL, etc). Why don't the devs there just work for free?
Incidentally I don't mean to suggest doodle as necessarily the best service of this sort. The only reason I remember doodle specifically is because someone used it on me last week.
Hmm... You should absolutely pay for features, if you want them, I would never say otherwise. My point is that SSL is not a feature, it's table stakes. Are you saying you think SSL on your login form is an upsell?
Having this discussion on Twitter right now with one of their developers. Go to their home page and click 'Sign in'. See the username/password prompt? Now, look at the URL bar. See something missing? In fact, the request is POST to https://... but the point is the user has no assurance that's the case. A web login form MUST be served from a top-level document under HTTPS.
The weird thing is that, in fact, the dev said they do provide SSL when logged into the app all the time to all users. It's only SSL on their public site that they only provide to paying customers. Well, I don't get that at all. And anyway it seems broken because I have a 14-day Premium Trial and I'm not getting that "feature". Just altogether very weird vibe. Anyway, this is now way OT for this thread.
In contrast, consider doodle (http://doodle.com/), which is exactly the GUI you are imagining. It shows me a grid of possible times. I click the times that are good. It detects my location and automatically displays times in IST. Takes me about 15 seconds to use with no confusion.
X.ai seems to be solving the problem of "I wish I had a secretary, but can't afford one". That's not the same problem as "lets schedule meetings in the most efficient way possible".
Dear x.ai folks, if any of you are reading this thread: please clone doodle and stick an x.ai/doodle link into the amy emails. If you do this, I'll consider deleting the gmail filter which currently blocks all emails from x.ai.