Does this scenario sound familiar? You need to bring a group of people together for an in-person meeting or a conference call. You send out an e-mail suggesting some dates/times for the potential meeting or call and ask the group to reply with their availability. The group sends a barrage of e-mails to you -- only for you to realize that none of the suggested dates/times will work for the entire group. So, it's back to the drawing board... I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way. Thanks to the geniuses at MeetingWizard.com, there is a free, online service that: sends out meeting invitations, tracks respondents' availability, confirms meetings, and sends out meeting reminders -- all in one easy-to-use system.

So how does it work? After signing up for a free account:

1. You invite participants providing a number of optional dates/times.

2. Participants respond to invitations by indicating when they are available.

3. You confirm the meeting or event after reviewing responses.

In addition, there are many other features that ensure you don't forget important details, and that all participants receive complete information about meetings.

Probably the best aspect of MeetingWizard is the fact that users only need an e-mail address and access to a Web browser in order to use it. By keeping the user-side technology simple, they have quite cleverly created a practically universal tool.

A colleague of mine mentioned this tool to me about three years ago, and it has proven to be both an immense time-saver and a wonderful frustration reducer. It has become such a trusted tool in my administrative "bag of tricks" that I tend to assume that everyone knows about it and uses it also.

After watching two resourceful colleagues wrestle with coordinating meetings earlier this week, I mentioned MeetingWizard to them only to learn that they had never heard of it. My high school geometry teacher told me never to assume, because it makes an...well, you know what it does.

So check out MeetingWizard today and reduce your administrative stress!