Getting a group to agree on a date

The situation

Six people have to settle on a date for the quarterly review, and you are the one holding the diary. Or seven directors have to sign something off, and you need four of them to say yes before anything can move.

The decision is not the hard part. The chasing is: asking the same question six times, tracking who has answered, nudging the two who have gone quiet, and knowing when you have enough to book the room.

What you need

A contact list with the group on it. Manage > Contacts (/manage/contacts) is the address book Player One uses when work involves other people, with a row for each way of reaching each of them. Ask your assistant to make a list for the group, which keeps them apart from your main directory.

The channel they are on, connected. Asking people outside your business and matching their answers back to them is proven on email and works on Telegram; ask before you plan around another one. Connect a channel has the steps.

A flow, written with your assistant. Flows are early access: they work, and they are still being finished, so give this one a few supervised runs before a real board meeting depends on it. Write your first flow covers describing a process and testing it.

The conversation

Open a chat and say what you want, including the rule for done.

"I need to fix a date for the quarterly review with the six people on my board list. Ask each of them privately whether the fourteenth, fifteenth or sixteenth of October works, and say we need two hours in the afternoon. I can book it once four of them agree on the same date, and Priya has to be one of them. Give everyone until Friday at noon. Nudge anyone who has not answered by Wednesday morning, once only. Tell me as soon as the rule is met, and tell me on Friday either way."

Your assistant reads it back as a process: who is asked, what they are asked, what counts as finished, when it closes, and what happens to the quiet ones. A rule like this has no ready-made pattern to copy, so it writes the rule out with you and tests it before you rely on it. Expect a question you had not thought of, such as what happens if four agree on a date Priya cannot make.

What comes back is a description in ordinary business words that you should recognise as your own process. It is compiled in the background and appears in the Library under Automations > Flows (/manage/flows).

What happens

Six separate messages go out at once, one per person. Nobody is copied in, nobody sees who else was asked, and nobody sees your side of it.

Replies come back in whatever order people get to them, and each is matched to the person who sent it. Someone who answers on Thursday is added to the three who answered on Tuesday; the run waits for days rather than starting again.

On Wednesday morning anyone who has not answered gets one polite nudge. Those who have are left alone.

The moment four agree on a date and Priya is one of them, you are told: the date, who agreed, who is still silent. If Friday noon comes first, you are told that instead, with whatever did come in.

The run is listed under Automations > Flows (/manage/flows) while it happens. Open it for a map of the process with the current step lit up, and a log of every message and every reply. Until the rule is met it shows as suspended rather than finished, which is how you tell waiting from stuck.

Make it yours

A vote rather than a date. Swap the dates for options and the rule for a majority: "ask the eleven members whether we adopt the new terms, and tell me when six have said yes".

Everyone, or one particular person. The rule can be all of them, a number of them, or a named person whose answer is required whatever the others say. Say which: your assistant will not assume.

First answer wins. For an on-call rota you do not want a quorum, you want whoever is awake: page everyone at once and let the first to acknowledge take it. That is a well-worn pattern and quicker to set up than a counting rule.

If people do not answer

Name the nudge when you set it up, and keep it to one. A reminder every hour teaches people to ignore you, and each message costs a little.

Name the deadline too: without one the run waits indefinitely, which is fine for a signature and wrong for a meeting next week.

You can also end it yourself: open the run under Automations > Flows (/manage/flows) and cancel it, or say so in the chat. "Drop Liam and go with the fifteenth" is a perfectly good instruction, and you can ask where things stand at any time.

Related

• Flows, for what a flow is and what the Flows pages show.
• Channels and communication, for channels and the contact lists this recipe leans on.
• Make it repeat, for choosing between a scheduled task, a watcher and a flow.
• Inbox triage with your approval, another process that stops for a person.