One of my least favorite tasks is finding dates that work. In the past, this involved looking through my calendar as well as looking at other calendars. I don’t mean scheduling a meeting with other people (though that is not a favorite thing either) but scheduling a webinar that does not conflict with my calendar or what is happening within an organization.
The webinar is a repurposed version of one I did for the ABA. We are bringing it to the PBA Technology committee and the Solo and Small Firm Section as a free program on AI. I gave Claude twelve candidate dates in September, all at noon, and three rules. I could not be traveling. Since the program begins at noon, I also needed the hour before it and the half hour after it open.
Checking My Own Calendar
Claude started with my Outlook calendar. It used the Microsoft 365 connector to read my events, so I did not have to forward anything or dig through the calendar myself. It pulled every September event and lined each candidate date up against my 11:00 to 12:30 window. It also converted noon Eastern to the way the events are actually stored, because a calendar entry does not always show the time zone you expect. Claude found the conflicts, that is dates I am traveling, dates when I have meetings at the same time, and even a biweekly reminder about medicine (which I told it was not an issue for scheduling).
Checking the PBA and PBI Calendars
The program is about AI, so I wanted to be sure no competing course or meeting landed on the same day. I opened Chrome and pointed Claude at the PBA events calendar and the PBI course catalog. It used the Claude in Chrome browser tools to read both.
The PBA calendar had nothing that was a problem. The PBI catalog was the real issue. Claude searched the live webcasts for “artificial intelligence,” then searched again by the Technology and AI practice area, so a course tagged one way but not the other would still surface. Only two September programs came close. One started at 1:00, after my window, so it was fine. The other fell on a date I decided to skip. This part of the process is what took the longest. Claude searched for programs on each date and then reviewed what each program was about.
Where It Landed
Next, we knocked off the Mondays and Fridays, because neither is ideal for webinars This brought the list down to five dates. I sent those to my co-speaker to pick from. So, instead of spending a frustrating period looking at all of the relevant calendars, I let Claude handle the frustrating task, which it completed in a few moments.
The Tools
The tools involved? The Microsoft 365 connector read my calendar. The Chrome browser tools read the two calendars I could only get to on the web. Claude held my constraints across all three and told me what it looked at so I could check its work. I still made the human calls, resting after a trip, for example. And I avoided spending an afternoon cross-referencing three calendars.