How do I plan a meeting when participants are in several time zones?

Start with the meeting date or date range, then ask each participant for their city or named time zone, usual workable hours on those dates, and any constraints such as unavailable periods or “not before 8 a.m.” Ask about the length of the meeting too, since a short meeting and a long one may not be equally workable at the edge of someone’s day.

Avoid collecting more personal detail than you need. For scheduling, a location or named time zone and availability are usually the useful inputs. Don’t rely on a bare time-zone offset as your only information; check each proposed local time for the actual meeting date.

Make one row for each candidate slot and one column for each participant. In each cell, record that person’s local date and time, then mark it workable, difficult, or unavailable using the limits they gave you. Agree on what those labels mean and apply them consistently. For example, if someone said they cannot attend before 8 a.m., treat a 7:30 a.m. option as unavailable for them, even if it suits everyone else.

First remove options that cross a stated limit. Then compare the remaining choices by who would have a difficult time and how often that person has already taken the inconvenient slot. Don’t let a larger headcount erase an individual constraint.

Here is a made-up example using local times supplied for the proposed date. The names and times are illustrative; for a real meeting, check each conversion for the exact date before relying on it.

Include the date in each row, and note when a participant’s local date is the following day. This makes a mismatch visible rather than leaving everyone to infer what “Tuesday at 9” means. The example does not identify a best slot: that depends on participants’ actual preferences and whether a difficult time is acceptable.

If no candidate fits, don’t present an inconvenient time as though it were automatically fair. Ask whether attendance is essential for everyone, whether the date can move, or whether the meeting can be shortened or split. For a recurring meeting, keep track of who gets the difficult hour and rotate it where practical. For a one-off, ask affected participants directly; silence is not confirmation.

Once you have a candidate, confirm the exact calendar date, start and end time, and named time zone. Ask each participant to check the local date and time they see, including whether it falls on the next day for them. If the date changes, check the proposed local times again. Then make sure the invitation matches what participants confirmed.

A concise confirmation could say: “Proposed meeting: [weekday, date], [start–end time] [named time zone]. Please check the local date and time shown to you and tell me if it differs or doesn’t work.”