How time zone meeting planner works
Planning a meeting across time zones means finding a single instant that lands in reasonable hours for everyone. This planner takes a proposed date and time in your host time zone, resolves it to an absolute instant, and formats that same instant in each attendee’s local time using the IANA time zone database — which knows each zone’s UTC offset and daylight saving rules for any date.
Each attendee’s local hour is labelled with a convenience category: work (inside your working-hours window), early (before work but awake), late (after work but before bed) or night (asleep). You set the working-hours window; the defaults are 08:00–18:00.
The planner also scans every candidate start hour of the same date in your host zone and scores each by how many attendees fall inside working hours, so you can pick the slot that inconveniences the fewest people. Always use full IANA names like America/New_York rather than abbreviations like EST, which are ambiguous.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add attendees?
List each attendee’s IANA time zone (for example America/New_York, Europe/London, Asia/Tokyo). You can optionally give each a label like “New York” or “Tokyo”. The planner shows every attendee’s local time and whether that hour is inside or outside working hours.
How does it pick the best meeting time?
For every hour of the date in your host zone, the planner converts to each attendee’s local time and counts how many land inside the working-hours window. Hours are ranked by that score, with the highest-scoring hour shown first so you can choose the slot that suits the most attendees.
Does it handle daylight saving time?
Yes. The planner uses the IANA time zone database via the JavaScript Intl API, so it applies the correct offset for the specific date, including DST transitions. The same zones can convert differently in summer and winter.
Why use IANA time zone names?
IANA names like Europe/London or Asia/Kolkata are unambiguous and encode daylight saving rules. Abbreviations like EST or IST are ambiguous — EST can mean US Eastern or Australian Eastern, and IST can mean India or Ireland — so they should be avoided when scheduling across regions.
