Help · Whenly.software

Everything about finding a time, in one place.

This is one page, not a maze of stubs — each section below is a real answer anchored on this page. It covers the find-a-time flow, what is built versus being built, running a poll as a coordinator, the embedding and custom-domain plans, and how your group’s data is handled.

Because whenly.software is early access, some of this describes how a step will work when the poll ships. Where that is the case, the section says so plainly rather than reading like a live feature.

On this page

Getting started

The honest starting point is a conversation, because self-serve onboarding is in development. Write to [email protected] with the kind of group you keep scheduling and how you do it today, and we will tell you exactly where the poll is in the build and add you to early access.

✓Say what you schedule

A committee, chaperones for a trip, a staff PD afternoon — and roughly how many people. That is enough to know whether whenly fits.

✓Hear what is real

We show the shared booking floor that is built and name the find-a-time pieces that are not. No demo of software that is not running.

✓Reserve early access

No card, no account provisioned. Early-access coordinators are first to run a real poll when it ships.

The find-a-time flow

The whole product is four steps. This is the design; there is no live poll to walk it on yet, and each step says what is built and what is not.

✓Propose a few candidate times

A coordinator picks a handful of times the meeting could happen and shares one link. No roster upload is required to start — a link is enough. This is the design; there is no live whenly.software poll to create one on yet.

✓Everyone marks each time: available, if need be, or no

A responder opens the link and marks each candidate time with one of three answers. No account, no install, and no sight of anyone else’s name or email — a responder is an opaque handle. Three answers, not two, because “I can if I have to” is the answer that actually breaks a tie.

✓The overlap surfaces the time that works for the most people

For each candidate time the design counts who is available, who is if-need-be, and who is out, and surfaces the winner with its honest runners-up. It is a plain count, not a model — there is no AI in it and none is claimed. The coordinator makes the call; the tool just does the arithmetic nobody wants to do by hand.

✓Lock the winning time as a real booking

One tap turns the winning column into an actual booking on the family’s shared no-double-book floor — held against capacity so a second group cannot double-book the room — and publishes a subscribable .ics feed with opaque labels, no names. Reminders are consent-gated and honest-off: queued against opt-in, and nothing is sent through this surface today. The lock and the feed are whenly’s own work and are planned; the floor is the shared engine.

Running a poll as a coordinator

The coordinator is the one person who needs an account; everyone they invite answers from one link with none. This is the designed shape of the coordinator side, labelled as the plan.

✓Propose the times, not the whole calendar

You pick a handful of candidate times — the ones that could actually work — rather than opening your whole calendar. Fewer, better options get faster answers.

✓Read the overlap, make the call

The overlap is surfaced for you: available, if-need-be, and out, counted per time. The tool does the arithmetic; you make the decision, including whether a stretch time is worth it.

✓Lock it, and it is a real booking

One tap turns the winning time into a booking on the shared no-double-book floor, held against capacity. That lock is planned; the floor is built.

✓Nobody sees a roster

Responders are opaque handles. Running a poll never turns into a contact list your whole group can read.

Embedding & sharing

The plan is to share a poll the way you already share links, and to embed one where your group already is. This is planned, not a live feature yet.

✓One link to share

A poll is a link. Paste it into an email, a message, or a staff bulletin; a responder needs no account to answer it. Planned.

✓An embeddable poll

The plan is a copyable snippet so a poll can live inside a school or team site rather than only on ours. Planned, not shipped.

✓A calendar feed with no names

Once a time is locked, a subscribable .ics feed with opaque labels only — no names, no real emails. Planned.

Custom domain & branding

The family-wide pattern is that a custom domain sits low, not behind an enterprise sales call, and removing our branding is one step up. whenly is planned to follow it — but it is the plan, not a live capability, and there is no committed price attached to it.

✓A domain you control

The plan is that your polls can serve from a hostname you own, on the plan a small team actually buys, not an enterprise contract. Planned.

✓Your brand on it

Removing our branding and applying yours is planned as a single step up, not a sales call. Planned, and not priced here.

✓The consent and legal footer stays ours

By design, the consent, privacy, and minor-safety footer is never white-labelable — we stay the data-controller of record for it, on every tier.

What is built, and what is being built

Plainly, so a skimmer cannot miss it. Built: the shared no-double-book booking floor the winning time locks onto — the family’s engine, not a whenly.software surface. Being built: the poll, the three-answer marking, the overlap finder, the one-tap lock, the opaque handles, and the zero-PII feed. Nothing on whenly.software serves a poll or a booking today.

The poll

One link, a handful of candidate times, no account to answer it

The design: a coordinator proposes a few candidate times and shares one link. Everyone who gets it marks each time without creating an account, without installing anything, and without seeing anyone else’s email. That is the whole front door — the thing the reply-all chain is standing in for today. It is being built; there is no whenly.software poll running yet, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

Planned · the find-a-time front door, being built

Three answers, not two

Available, if need be, or no — because “maybe” is real information

A yes/no poll throws away the most useful answer a person can give: “I can make it work if I have to.” The design carries three states per time — available, if-need-be, and no — so the overlap can prefer a slot everyone is genuinely free for, and fall back to one a couple of people can stretch to only when nothing clean exists. Designed, not built.

Planned · part of the unbuilt poll

The overlap, computed

The time that works for the most people, surfaced — not left for you to eyeball

Once responses are in, the design computes the overlap: for each candidate time, how many are available, how many only if-need-be, how many out — and it surfaces the winner and the honest runners-up. It is a plain count of who is free, not a model and not a prediction; there is no AI here and none is claimed. Designed, not built.

Planned · a deterministic count, no AI

The part a poll can’t do

Lock the winning time as a real booking, in one tap

This is the line between a poll and a scheduler. A group-poll tool ends at a coloured grid you then re-type into a real calendar by hand. The design here is that the winning time becomes an actual booking on the family’s shared no-double-book floor — held against capacity, so a second group cannot grab the same room out from under it. The lock wiring is whenly’s own work and is planned; the floor it locks onto is the shared engine below.

Planned · the poll-to-booking lock, being built

The floor it locks onto

The no-double-book floor is the family’s shared engine — and it is built

The winning time is designed to land on the same booking floor the schedule.software family is built on: no double-book and per-slot capacity enforced at the database, not in application code that can race. In the family’s own words, “no double-booking is possible: a partial-unique index” on the bookings table, with a transactional capacity count under a lock. To be exact about what that sentence claims: this is the shared engine, grounded in the sibling page’s copy, not a whenly.software surface — nothing on whenly serves a booking today. The floor is built; whenly’s use of it is planned.

Built · shared engine (not a whenly.software surface)

No names in it

A poll that carries opaque handles, not names or emails

The group-poll tools people know put every participant’s name, and often their email, in front of everyone who opens the poll. The design here is the opposite: a responder is an opaque handle, and the coordinator sees availability without the poll becoming a contact list. Minor-safe by construction: where any surface touches a roster, identity fields route through a consent chokepoint — the row still counts, only the identity is stripped. Designed, not built.

Planned · opaque by design, minor-safe

A feed with no names

The locked time, subscribable as a calendar feed that carries no names

Once a time is locked, the design is a subscribable .ics feed with opaque labels only: no participant name, no organizer name, no real email address in the SUMMARY or ORGANIZER fields — only a non-PII handle. So subscribing to a meeting you coordinated cannot quietly turn your calendar app into a directory of everyone who attended. Designed, not built.

Planned · zero-PII feed

No ads to your group

No ads shown to the people you invite — ever

The free tier of the poll category is paid for by showing ads to your invitees. That is a choice, not a law: the design commitment here is that whenly shows no ads to anyone who opens a poll, on any tier. It is a commitment about a product being built, not a feature running today.

Planned · a design commitment, not a live feature

FAQ

How is this different from a group-availability poll?

Three ways, and they are the whole reason whenly exists. First, the winning time locks into a real booking on a no-double-book floor — a poll tool ends at a coloured grid you re-type into a calendar by hand. Second, there are no names in the poll: a responder is an opaque handle, not a row in a contact list everyone can read. Third, there are no ads shown to your invitees. To be honest about status: all three are the design of a product being built, not features running today.

Do the people I invite have to make an account?

No — that is a design goal, not an afterthought: a responder should be able to mark a few times from one link with no account and no install. The coordinator side is where early access lives while the product is built. Nothing is self-serve yet, which is why the honest next step on this page is the waitlist rather than a sign-up form that cannot create an account.

Are there names in the poll?

No, by construction. A responder is an opaque handle; the coordinator sees availability without the poll turning into a roster of names and email addresses. Where any surface touches a school roster, identity fields route through a consent chokepoint — a suppressed person’s name is stripped at the server, the row still counts, and it is never a UI filter a client request could switch off.

What does “if need be” mean?

It is the third answer a responder can give a candidate time, alongside available and no. It means “I can make it work if I have to.” Carrying it lets the overlap prefer a time everyone is genuinely free for and fall back to a stretch time only when nothing clean exists — information a yes/no poll throws away.

Is any of this AI?

No. Finding the overlap is a plain count of who marked each time available — arithmetic, not a model, not a prediction. There is no AI-generated or AI-assist claim anywhere on this page, and no model is trained on your responses.

What does it cost?

There is no committed price yet, and this page will not invent one. The plan is a real free way to find a time for a group, with a small paid tier for coordinators who want more — but the exact tiers are not set, so no figure is published here. Whatever the tiers turn out to be, they will be the planned launch pricing, not a live checkout: no card is charged on this site.

Can I use whenly.software today?

Not yet. whenly.software is early access: this page describes the mechanism honestly, labels the shared booking floor as built and everything find-a-time as planned, and asks you to join the waitlist rather than claiming a live product that does not exist yet.

Is my group’s data private, and is it safe for a school?

The design is private by default: opaque handles in the poll, a zero-PII calendar feed, consent-gated reminders that send nothing today, no ads shown to your invitees, and no sale or sharing of anyone’s data. FERPA and COPPA are posture built in by construction, not a certificate we hold or claim. Minor scheduling data is consent-aware, access-controlled, and never public.

Data & minor safety

whenly is adult coordination, but the minor-safety floor still binds and the privacy design is the same either way. The privacy page is the long version; the short version is here.

✓No names in the poll, no directory built from it

A responder is an opaque handle. Opening a poll does not hand you a list of everyone else’s name and email — the exact thing the group-poll tools normalise. There is no contact list to harvest here.

✓No ads shown to the people you invite

The design commitment is that whenly shows no ads to anyone who opens a poll, on any tier. The free tier of the category is usually paid for with ads served to your invitees; this is not.

✓No names in the calendar feed

The subscribable .ics feed carries opaque labels only: no participant name, no organizer name, no real email address — only a non-PII handle. Subscribing to a meeting cannot turn your calendar into a directory.

✓No advertising profile, no data sale, no model training

We do not build an advertising profile from a poll, we do not sell or rent scheduling data, and no model is trained on anyone’s responses. There is no third-party analytics or advertising script on this site.

Minor scheduling data is consent-aware, access-controlled, and never public. Where any surface touches a school roster, identity fields route through a consent chokepoint — a suppressed person’s name is stripped at the server; the row still counts, only the identity is stripped. FERPA and COPPA are posture built in by construction, not a certificate we hold.