Everyone marks what works, and agreement books it

Proposing to a group used to mean the fastest tapper decided for everybody. Now each person marks every time that suits them, and a meeting only books when they actually agree.

Sending one proposal to five people has always worked, but only in one shape: whoever tapped first took the slot and the other four found out afterwards. That is the right behaviour when you are booking one meeting with whoever is free soonest. It is the wrong behaviour when the meeting needs all five, which for a board, a panel or a review is most of the time — and the workaround was a thread of emails, which is the thing Hotline exists to end.

There is now a third option when you propose to two or more people: everyone marks what works. Each person still gets their own link, and instead of choosing one time they tap every time that suits them. Nobody books the group on their own. If one of your times works for all of them it books itself and the invites go out; if none does, the decision comes back to you.

Four rules decide when there is agreement, and they are worth knowing because they are what stop this getting stuck. Everyone still in the running has to have answered — four out of five is not agreement while the fifth is mid-decision. Someone who declines leaves the count rather than making agreement impossible, which matters most in exactly the case where you need the rest to converge. Ties go to the earliest time you offered. And a group with nothing in common does not fail silently: Meetings shows you every answer, one row per time you offered, with how many can make each and who you are still waiting on, and a Confirm on every row — including the rows nobody marked, which say so before you pick them.

Nothing you have already sent has changed. One shared time that the first person to tap locks in, and separate links that each book their own, both work exactly as they did.