Add ‘Request a Meeting’ Functionality in BuddyPress

Let’s associate words. Home-Rest, Student-Lecture, Office-Work, Boss-?

Meeting.

When you have a80 team, you work with, meetings are unavoidable. This could be a scheduled meeting or an impromptu one. In smaller organizations, (probably a single department) you could probably walk up to the person, and request a meeting. In a larger organization, (which contains more than 50 employees), you’ll need a different approach.

Should Meetings be Part of Social Networking?

Usually, when you hear the words “social networking”, you tend to think of informal meetups. But that is not true. A social network can be beneficial for a company, to divide employees into groups, and to track employee activity. It is also a platform for employees to easily and quickly communicate with each other.

A social networking plugin like BuddyPress, provides several options for members to communicate with each other.  You can have private or public messages exchanged between members. There are forums for group communication and collaboration, as well. With activity streams, you can keep track of an employee’s recent activity. With BuddyPress, you can create a mini-Facebook for your company.

So, here’s a perspective!

Since, the social networking application you use, becomes central to the employee communication process, you can include a meeting scheduler, as part of the social networking application (in our case BuddyPress) as well.

How do you Add a Meeting Request Functionality in BuddyPress?

This ‘Request a Meeting’ functionality, would be added into a member’s profile. To make it simple, the meeting requests will be listed, as a private field under each user’s profile, and would be hidden from others.

For each meeting request received, a user will have an option to ‘Accept’ or ‘Decline’ it. There will also be an option to view meeting details.

To send a meeting request, a BuddyPress member, will have to go to another member’s profile, and use the ‘Request Meeting’ option, to send a meeting request. Here, the member can add meeting details, such as date and time.

An e-mail notification will also be sent, for every meeting request received, meeting requested accepted or declined. There could also be settings provided, where you can set the e-mail messages, and create a basic template.

The status of the request (whether accepted/or declined) will be updated on the meeting sender’s profile.

Do note: This is only a postulated solution, and we do not have a ready plugin available.

What do you think about the Meeting Scheduler for BuddyPress?

Agreed that the BuddyPress plugin is not just for creating company wide social networks, and that it could be used for student groups, and intimate communities as well, when a Meeting Scheduler might not necessarily be needed. However, when it comes to networks, which would need such an application, having it as a part of the BuddyPress plugin, can save you the trouble of having to hunt down another meeting scheduler or managing application. And will make BuddyPress a wholesome solution for your company’s social network.

What are your thoughts about this? I’d like to hear your views and opinions, and suggestions to improve this solution.