Scheduling appointments can be easy, if you have a personal assistant, secretary, or you know how to leverage technology. Voicemail tag is pretty common when you don’t have an assistant, and you are trying to schedule an appointment with someone. Messages back and forth, as you try to figure out the best time to meet. Tungle.me is an online scheduling tool that makes it easy to share your available time slots with others.

UPDATE September 18: Tungle announced today on their blog that they are “sunsetting” the service, which means terminating, on Monday, December 3rd, 2012. The company recommends Doodle as an alternative and at first glance the service appears to function very similar to Tungle. Doodle is free and lets you sign up without a lot of registration hassle. It is ad-supported unless you upgrade to a premium plan – Solo/individual level is $39/year.

It is a simple tool that integrates with most Web-based and desktop email clients (where calendars usually reside) including Microsoft Outlook, Gmail/Google Calendar, iCal/Entourage, and even Facebook’s calendar.

As you can see in the screenshot above for my account, it looks and works similarly to sending an appointment request in other applications. One particular item I want to mention here — where it says Message (optional) — you should add a short sentence or two that explains the recipient does not have to sign up for Tungle.me in order to set an appointment with you.

Otherwise, it is not entirely clear and some people will simply get irritated with the method. The other party only has to provide their email so the service can keep you both updated on appointment changes, if any.

What I Really Like:

• You can propose multiple meeting times and the other person can choose the one that works best for them.
• Or, you can let them choose from your entire calendar whenever you have times “available.”
• I like that it works across platforms and it doesn’t matter if I’m on a Mac and you’re on a Blackberry or PC, it just works and lets us book the appointment and puts it on the calendar.

What I’d Like to See:

• A mobile app for other smartphone platforms like iOS or Android powered phones on the mobile page. Right now, you see only a Blackberry option. Of course, it could be that RIM owns Tungle.me and they don’t plan on adding other apps since you can load it via any browser.
• Some blog posts that tell me the service isn’t going to go away. It’s pretty sparse over there. But since its free, you don’t have anything to lose with giving it a go. It looks like it will continue as a service.

Tungle.me is a lightweight, simple Web app that can help you stay out of voicemail jail and fire off one message to get something scheduled. They make it fairly easy to sign up for an account, of course, with Twitter, Google, and Facebook login options as well as just regular email.

It’s worth a try if you find yourself constantly challenged by setting appointments.

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