Meeting planner
No hour works for everyone. Pick the fairest one.
San Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, Bengaluru, Singapore - often zero shared working hours. The question is not 'is there overlap?' It is 'who absorbs the stretch, and how do we make that visible?'
Published 23 October 2026
The same people always take the hit
On a six-city team there is often no hour when everyone is inside working hours. Without a shared view, the organiser picks a time that is comfortable for HQ. Bengaluru or Manila quietly join at 21:30 again. Next week, the same pattern repeats.
Fairness is not finding a magical overlap that does not exist. It is measuring the stretch, rotating who takes it, and saying the trade-off out loud on the invite.
A better process than 'does 10am work?'
- List every office with its local hours, workdays, and holidays - not just the time zones.
- Check whether any shared green band exists. If it does, meet inside it.
- If it does not, compare candidates by minutes early / late per city instead of by organiser preference.
- Name the cost on the invite: 'SF 3h early · Bengaluru 1h late'.
- Rotate the painful slot across quarters so the same region is not always the one staying late.
What the meeting planner shows
The time zone meeting planner lines up every city for a chosen day, highlights working / off / night / weekend / holiday, and proposes a best time with a plain-language verdict — for example "1 of 3 in working hours" plus who is early or late.
Drag the green slot to try another hour. Untick optional people. Send the result to Google Calendar or Outlook with local times already spelled out.
When half the team is off that day
Custom workweeks and holidays change the problem. A Friday that works for New York may be weekend in Riyadh and a holiday in Bengaluru. Scoring only the offices that are working that day avoids "optimising" for people who were never going to join.
See also custom workweeks and holidays and the daylight saving meeting week guide for the weeks when offsets themselves move.
Rules of thumb
- Prefer 2–4 shared hours on most days over forcing daily all-hands across twelve time zones.
- Use async updates for status; reserve live time for decisions.
- If US–India overlap is ~90 minutes of comfortable time, protect it — do not fill it with optional syncs.
- Never schedule from a single world-clock widget that ignores weekends and holidays.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers to common questions. Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us anytime.
What does 'fairest' meeting time mean?When nobody fully overlaps, the planner scores candidate hours by how far each person is pushed outside their working hours, then prefers the slot that keeps the total stretch small — and shows who is early or late and by how much.
Should optional attendees be required for the score?No. In the meeting planner you can untick anyone who is optional so they do not pull the slot toward an extreme timezone.
How do weekends and holidays affect the fairest slot?Offices that are on weekend or holiday that day are marked off and do not block the others. The suggestion text names who was skipped so the invite is honest.
More guides
See who's working on your team now
Add cities once. Custom workweeks, holidays, and daylight saving are handled per office.