How to schedule a group meeting with ChatGPT or Claude

If Pickadate is connected to your AI assistant, you can run a whole date poll from the chat: describe the meeting, check the dates it proposes, let it send the invitations, ask who's missing a few days later, and tell it to confirm the winning date. Below is one real example from start to finish, with the prompts, what the assistant asks you before it emails anyone, and the two moments where the website is quicker.

The example: a committee meeting for eight people

Say you chair a small club committee. Eight people, all busy, and you need a two-hour evening meeting sometime in the next three weeks. Normally this is a group chat where four people answer, two answer the wrong question and one says "any day but Tuesday" after you've booked Tuesday.

You need two things before you start:

1. A free Pickadate account, because the assistant works as you.
2. Pickadate connected to your assistant: in Claude through its connector directory, in ChatGPT through its plugin directory, or in any tool that supports remote MCP servers. The AI assistants page has the steps for each. You only do this once.

Step 1: describe the meeting in one message

Give the assistant everything it needs in a single prompt. The more you say up front, the fewer questions come back:

Set up a group poll on Pickadate called "Committee meeting, November". Propose Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 18:30 to 20:30 for the next three weeks, Lisbon time. Replies by next Friday. Don't invite anyone yet.

A few things happen here that are worth knowing:

• Group poll is Pickadate's name for the classic "which dates work?" event: everyone answers yes, maybe or no for each date. If you wanted one fixed date and a head count, you'd ask for an RSVP instead. A group scheduling poll explains the difference.
• Dates are in the event's time zone. Saying "Lisbon time" sets it. Without it, Pickadate uses the time zone of your last event.
• The reply-by date has to come before the first proposed date. If you ask for something impossible, the assistant will tell you and ask again.

"Don't invite anyone yet" matters. Creating an event with invitees sends the invitations straight away, so it's worth checking the dates first.

Step 2: check the dates before anyone sees them

Ask the assistant to show you what it made:

Show me the dates you proposed.

Nine evenings is a lot to answer. Trim it:

Remove the Thursdays in the first week. Add Monday the 9th, same time.

Adding or removing dates is a change everyone invited hears about by email, which is why you do this now, before inviting anyone. Once people have answered, removing a date also removes their answers for it, and that can't be undone.

Step 3: invite people

If you've invited these people before, the assistant can find them in your Pickadate contacts:

Invite the committee: Ana, Rui, Marta, João, Inês, Pedro and Sofia. Use the addresses from my contacts.

This is the moment the assistant asks you to confirm, because it's about to email seven people. Check the names and say yes. Each person gets a personal link and answers on the website. They don't need an account, an app or an AI assistant of their own.

Two limits to know about: an event can have at most 20 invited people, and the number of invitations an assistant can send for you each day is capped. If you hit the cap, the assistant tells you how many are left.

If you'd rather post one link in the club's group chat instead of emailing everyone, ask for the share link:

Give me the link to share this poll.

Step 4: chase the slow ones

A few days later:

Who hasn't answered the committee meeting poll yet?

You'll get the names, plus the dates that work best so far. Then:

Send a reminder to everyone who hasn't answered.

The assistant asks before sending. Reminders go only to people who haven't answered yet, they count against the same daily limit as invitations, and anyone who was invited or reminded about this event in the last 24 hours is skipped, so you can't flood someone by asking twice.

Step 5: pick the date and tell everyone

When the replies are in:

Which date works best? Show me who said maybe.

Pickadate lists the dates with the most yes answers first. If two dates tie, look at the maybes, or at who can't make each one: losing the treasurer is worse than losing a guest. That part is your decision, not the assistant's. Then:

Confirm Wednesday the 11th and let everyone know.

Confirming a date emails everyone involved, so the assistant asks one last time.

If you want the poll to stop taking answers without confirming anything, ask it to close the event. Closing emails nobody.

Where the website is quicker

The assistant is good at the parts that are tedious by hand: typing nine dates, looking up seven email addresses, working out who hasn't answered. Two things are easier on the website:

• Deleting an event. The assistant can't delete events at all; you do that from the event's manage page.
• Looking at the grid. For a big poll, the event page shows every person's answer for every date at a glance. Asking the assistant "who said no to the 12th?" works, but the grid is faster to read.

What the assistant can and can't see

The assistant acts as you. It sees only events you created while signed in and your own contacts, nothing from anyone else's account. You can remove its access at any time from your account page, under Connected apps. Our privacy policy explains what Pickadate stores when you connect an assistant.

The prompts, all together

1. "Set up a group poll called … Propose … from … to …, … time. Replies by …. Don't invite anyone yet."
2. "Show me the dates you proposed." Then add or remove dates.
3. "Invite … Use the addresses from my contacts." Confirm when asked.
4. "Who hasn't answered yet?" then "Send a reminder to everyone who hasn't answered."
5. "Which date works best?" then "Confirm … and let everyone know."

That's a committee meeting scheduled in five messages, without a single "does Tuesday work for you?" in the group chat.