
Show HN: Summarize your time availability in seconds - jonathancai11
https://whattime.today/
======
jonathancai11
Hey guys, when people ask to schedule a meeting/interview/whatever, I've
always found it hard to respond with a list of time availabilities.

I always tabbed back and forth between my Google calendar to construct a
message that accurately listed my free time, but this was painful.

My site helps me do this small task, and I wanted to see if anyone else had
this same problem, had some feedback for me, or if there were any other simple
solutions and I've wasted my time building this crap.

Note: I've yet to have my app verified by Google, so if you wish to import
your own Google calendar on to my site, the consent screen will look sketchy.

~~~
smashpanda
Found I have the same issue. Customer facing folks have it even worse.

As much as I love the solution what I really want is a cli that’ll spit out my
meetings OR my free time.

I.e I could say: cli --free 60m —today

And it would spit out the 60 minute chunks (in my time zone). Would love to
copy paste that but not sure how hard it would be to do with the google api

~~~
awake
here is the api you want. I use this to auto schedule my todos from a plain
text file to my calendar

[https://developers.google.com/calendar/v3/reference/freebusy...](https://developers.google.com/calendar/v3/reference/freebusy/query)

~~~
smashpanda
Most excellent, thank you. My biggest blocker to getting started was the setup
of a “google app”. Getting a token and all that.

Is it fairly straightforward to start making rest calls? I’d love to just hit
that api

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moltar
The title confused me. I thought the summary would expressed in seconds, like
Unix epoch time.

~~~
netsharc
Same here, I thought it'd be a productivity tool that would rapidly count down
and make me aware "You only have this many seconds left budgeted for [_____]".
I was looking for the "Go!" button I thought I'd have to click after adding at
least 1 thing to the calendar.

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GuB-42
Very nice, here is a suggestion: 24-hour clock

I've seen you suggest time zones from all over the world, which is nice. But
the AM/PM system is mostly an American thing, a 24-hour clock is more common
elsewhere.

I suppose you can query the browser for the appropriate format to use like you
are doing for the time zone.

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks for the feedback! Totally forgot 24-hr clock was a thing, will add that
as a option asap

~~~
jonathancai11
Added

~~~
ken
Minor nit: the PM/24 toggle seems to only be for the output text, and doesn't
affect the timeline selection scale.

~~~
jonathancai11
I'll see if I can do something about this, I am using react-big-calendar

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boldlybold
Is there a reason why overlapping blocks are not extended into a single block?
With a few clicks and drags you can create a mess of a schedule.

~~~
jonathancai11
Yes that is definitely a feature I can add in. I don't think I gave the
instruction anywhere but you can delete an availability by clicking on it
also. That should help the clutter

~~~
jonathancai11
Added!

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jaflo
I like this a lot (was actually thinking of building something similar)! Some
feedback I have:

\- When I log in with my Google account, my name is shown as undefined ("Hi,
undefined!").

\- It would be nice to quickly select/unselect all of my calendars (I have a
lot, but only one I really need to use).

\- It would be cool to select a date range and then ask it to spit out all
availabilities based on my calendar without needing to manually select
available times. Although I like the current opt-in way too. Just a thought,
maybe no change is needed here.

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks so much for the feedback!

1\. What browser are you using? I haven't gotten that before, so interested to
see whats causing that

2\. I definitely want to add that as a feature soon.

3\. And yeah I've seen another app calendar.management do that, but I've found
opt-in to make more sense imo. Something to consider in the future though

~~~
jaflo
1\. This happens to me in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. I get an error related
to something being blocked by CSP, maybe that's it?

2\. I saw your other comment and yes, that fixes it!

~~~
jonathancai11
1\. Thank you for trying it out on those browsers - never thought someone
would care enough to test it like this! Nonetheless, I really have no idea
what's causing that.. I guess as long as the Google calendar events load in
correctly its not a big deal?

2\. Cool!

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newswasboring
I clicked on the site without reading your opening comments. It took me a
couple of minutes to understand what the purpose is. I think I would not have
given it that much time if it was not a Show HN. But then again its such a
specialized tool that if someone finds it they will perhaps know how to use
it. I don't know, maybe add a button somewhere for a simple explanation?

Also the title says "What time today?" but actually the default calendar which
shows up is the work week. That seems like mixed messages. Here is something I
think will be cool, make the "What time ______?" as a drop down. So it goes
"what time this week/day/work week?" etc. Some people might find it cheesy
though.

~~~
smashpanda
I instantly got it. Maybe you don’t schedule a lot of meetings. I have to
schedule 3 meetings on avg a day _I think_.

Constant pita

~~~
newswasboring
Yes that can be it. For me other people organize meetings with me and for that
they can just look at my outlook calendar.

~~~
jonathancai11
You let them view your entire calendar? Or are you able to filter which are
visible

~~~
newswasboring
Sorry for the late reply but for the sake of complete feedback I'll still post
this. Yes I let them view my entire calendar but not in detail. So they can
view when I'm busy and when I'm free but not which meeting it is.

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__initbrian__
Cool project! Great work. I think this perfectly fits the send me your
availability niche. When working with groups, I've used when2meet[0]

[0] [https://www.when2meet.com/](https://www.when2meet.com/)

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks! Yeah, this definitely doesn't solve the group scheduling problem like
when2meet does. I think its also a bit frustrating to tab back and forth
between my Google calendar page and the when2meet event to fill it out, maybe
they should integrate also!

~~~
hantusk
like [https://doodle.com/](https://doodle.com/)

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wjdp
Neat, could see myself using this.

Couple of things:

\- After placing a timeslot I went to drag it up and down. Instead it created
another timeslot within the first one. Having used Google calendar a lot I
kept subconsciously trying this:
[http://i.imgur.com/G9SlRAh.png](http://i.imgur.com/G9SlRAh.png)

\- Showing timezone is great but the dates are in the US MM/DD format. For
everyone else this really throws us, especially when the date is ambiguous.
DD/MM really should be the default outside the US. Also perhaps an option for
the ISO YYYY-MM-DD format.

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks!

1\. Yep, definitely an issue, I'm gonna try to have adjacent availabilities
just combine into each other (also you can delete availabilities by clicking
on them!)

2\. I had not thought about that but that is something I'll fix soon also

~~~
jonathancai11
Added DD/MM and combining availabilities

~~~
wjdp
Amazing!

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mfontani
I like it because it has many toggles, some of which are "cute".

By default, it suggests a date/time for today on "5/1", and there doesn't seem
to be a toggle for that.

In most of the world, that's not the first of May:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country)

Would it be possible to make the date format also a toggle or a cusomisable
option?

~~~
jonathancai11
Thank you for the feedback!

Do you mean M/D vs D/M? I believe I've added that to the output formatting as
another toggle

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zvr
Interesting -- congrats on building it!

Further possible enhancements:

\- more timezones

\- week starting on Monday

\- hide weekend

\- every generated time is a link to timeanddate/worldclock/something that can
automatically convert it to other timezones

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks for the feedback!

1\. Added some more timezones, but not yet comprehensive I guess

2\. Added work_week option for desktop

3\. Same as 2

4\. Maybe in the future? But I think my original goal was to avoid links so
you can send self-contained availabilities in an email to someone

~~~
netsharc
On the topic of week starts, US calendars is funny because it starts on
Sunday. European calendars start on Monday. In some Muslim countries they have
Fridays, Saturdays off, and I guess they work again on Sunday. Welcome to
dealing with time! I'm sure you've also read:
[https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-
program...](https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-time) . I guess a logical option would be to have 2 options:
"Start week on [Weekday]" (using a dropdown chooser) and "Show [n] days" (some
people maybe want a 6-day week, and others just a 3-day one!).

I noticed the "Copy" button generates a copy-pastable text. I was half
expecting an encoded URL that one could share with people, they'd open this
URL in their browser and see what the user just entered. For me at least it's
easier to see a graphical calendar rather than trying to parse entries like
"Friday May 1, 8:00-10:00."

The data doesn't even have to be stored server-side, you could encode the
times and generate a URL with a "#", which the app would then decode so it
could render the calendar with the markings.

~~~
jonathancai11
The article looks interesting, I'll have a read in a bit.

Also, the URL to send the encoded calendar is a great idea! I've thought about
doing that before, but focused on just creating the message because I thought
users would rather just get the text and be done with the site, but I think
I'll implement it and see if people use it

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abrichr
Congrats on shipping! I've been thinking about building something similar to
scratch my own itch. I think ideally it would generate availability for an
arbitrary time span, e.g a week.

Also, I didn't end up trying it due to the sketchy consent screen you
mentioned. Maybe there's a lower friction way to get someone's schedule, e.g.
screenshot?

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks! And yeah, a part of me wishes I waited for Google verification to
post.. I'm too impatient for their "4-6 weeks"

------
c-smile
That's telling:
[https://whattime.today/static/media/peep1.5d348a4f.png](https://whattime.today/static/media/peep1.5d348a4f.png)

~~~
jonathancai11
What do you mean by that?

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garyrichardson
I need the following calendar states:

\- Free \- Out of Office \- Busy \- Busy, but I can definitely reschedule this
for the right reason

As someone with a very active calendar I often tell people "My calendar is up
to date, but for this I'm also available at x, y, z if it works for you"

But I guess that depends on incorporate who's asking and what they are asking
for..

~~~
jonathancai11
I guess I don't take enough meetings to need this type of complexity, but I'll
add this feature to the icebox!

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bobblywobbles
This is a neat app, thanks for creating it and hosting it for us to use.

~~~
jonathancai11
Thanks for checking it out!

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somehelpful
I get off-my-one for the month (3/30 for today, 30th of April) in Safari on
iOS

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jonathancai11
You are right! Can't believe I didn't notice this until now.. I'll take a
look. Thanks for pointing this out!

~~~
jonathancai11
Fixed.. Apparently Javascript Date objects index months by 0. Stupid on my
part for not noticing until now

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saagarjha
Probably stole it from Java, which does the same thing.

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tradertef
It would be nice if somehow outlook calendar can be imported as well.

~~~
jonathancai11
Definitely! I'm a bit biased in trying to solve my GCal issues first, but if
there's some more requests for outlook I can work on importing them

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cuddlybacon
All I see is a blank white page on Safari 13.1 EDIT: It's been fixed.

~~~
jonathancai11
Really sorry, I deployed using Google App Engine, trying to resolve this
now... :(

~~~
cuddlybacon
Gave it another shot, and it seems fine now. :)

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lihaciudaniel
Looks good I don't think anyone would care about my schedule

