Back to blog

5 Best AI Scheduling Assistants to Help Boost Productivity to New Heights

Get the inside scoop on what an AI scheduling assistant is, the top benefits and 5 of the best choices that can help you or your team reach new heights.

Motion Blog
at Motion
Jan 11, 2024
Table of contents

Daily planning is more than organizing tasks.

For most business owners (and project managers), that means managing appointments, scheduling meetings, and ensuring scheduling conflicts don't derail your day. Never mind the constant last-minute changes.

Suppose you also have to juggle an entire team and several time zones, manage multiple projects, and do some heads-down work. In that case, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not using scheduling software.

Artificial intelligence (AI) enabled assistants are becoming indispensable. From a business perspective, AI is a significant part of everything they do, from project management to scheduling.

Let's explore what AI assistants are, how they work, the benefits of having one (for any business), and the five best ones on the market.

What is an AI scheduling assistant?

AI scheduling assistants use natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to gain insights into (user) patterns and preferences and then make "smart" suggestions or adjustments.

These assistants use ML to constantly learn and improve from the user's usage patterns and preferences over time.

With the help of AI, these assistants analyze ‌user calendar availability, daily schedules, weekly tasks, and much more to suggest the best meeting or task times.

What are the benefits of using an AI scheduling assistant?

Now that you know what AI is, let's talk about the benefits of using an AI calendar assistant.

5 Benefits of AI as thought bubbles from a robot

Here are some of the most obvious (and important) benefits.

Saves (a ton of) time

Think about your typical daily routine. It's probably filled with tasks, meetings, and deadlines. Scheduling all this manually can be quite a hassle (especially when you are handling this for an entire team or business).

With an AI assistant handling schedules and calendars, you won't have to spend as much time on this time-sucking administrative work. More time to spend on real work!

Some AI scheduling assistants even offer insights into your and your team's time management and productivity.

Scheduling accuracy

People make mistakes. Booking errors or scheduling too many things at once.

AI doesn't make mistakes. It just continues to learn and optimize.

This means you and your team's schedules are handled. No stressing, just more time to do the work that matters. Plus, AI can serve up the most critical tasks first, so no more guessing where to focus your efforts.

Integrations help to simplify processes

Most AI schedulers can integrate with your email and favorite productivity tools so that you can see everything in one place. This seamless integration means no more app-hopping.

Some take it further, pulling data from messages to build tasks or schedule meetings for you.

For example, say you got an email from an investor asking if they can set up a meeting with you on Tuesday. Your AI assistant can do all the heavy lifting for you and book meetings without you ever needing to open up an app.

Eliminate bias

You can't deny that managing a team of people can lead to developing bonds that then lead to preferences. Ain't nothing wrong with that, but it can create conflict and breed disengagement.

You can avoid all of these problems with algorithmic scheduling.

AI does its thing based on data and facts, including capabilities and preferences that can be input to create optimized schedules for everyone.

Boost productivity with schedule optimization

Without the mental lift of schedule administration and app-hopping, you buy yourself and your team more quality time. Time that can be blocked off for that heads-down work.

AI can learn your preferences, understand your habits, and spit out suggestions for you (like when you need to take a break). Almost all AI assistants offer buffer time. These small breaks between meetings or tasks help you reorient for the next task or meeting.

What to look for in AI for scheduling

Ready to go from smart to AI-powered? Here are key features to consider.

Intuitive interface

You’ll use your calendar app frequently during the day, so it must be practical, understandable, and user-friendly.

The last thing you need in the middle of a busy day is to struggle with something as simple as understanding your schedule.

Your scheduler AI should visualize all your tasks ‌and meetings in an easy-to-digest platform (like a calendar) that you can easily self-manage with just a few clicks.

Easy set-up

Setting up, onboarding, and integrating the AI scheduler app shouldn't be a whole project unto itself. Otherwise, you're defeating the purpose of this whole exercise.

Ditto for integrating the app with other online tools that you might already be working with, like Google Calendar and Google Meet. Look for "native" (built-in) integrations.

For example, you should look for apps that you can have up and running within a day.

True AI

The key feature might be that it's truly an AI-enabled app, not just mimicking AI.

How can you tell? AI does the data crunching and learning in the background. No handholding is required.

And then the app should serve up its functionalities automatically.

For example, look for a tool that can automatically allocate tasks as they come up. That could effectively cut out hours of administrative time.

5 Best AI scheduling assistants?

With all this in mind, let’s now break down the best AI scheduling assistants available and see how they work and what they have to offer.

1. Motion — great for busy people or teams with tons of tasks

The best AI scheduling assistant. Motion helps busy professionals and teams save time and get more done.

Motion

‎Motion's AI can organize you and your team's tasks, projects, and meetings, so each task or meeting is strategically scheduled considering other commitments and peak productive hours.

You can assign four types of priorities to tasks, ranging from ASAP to low, which will determine how soon (or late) the task makes its way onto your calendar. You can also decide if the task needs to be done with a hard or soft deadline, letting the engine be as tough as nails or as lax as a hammock.

If ever you find yourself out of sync, a cautionary message on the dashboard will let you know how many assignments are in danger of not being finished in time. This can encourage you to adjust the activity or to speed up — whichever is most reasonable.

Motion has a clean and user-friendly interface. Even if you aren't tech-savvy, you'll find it easy to navigate and make changes as you use it. User experience is the top priority, and it's tailored to fit your daily routine, making scheduling a pleasant and useful reminder instead of a tedious task.

Standout features:

  • All your tasks, projects, and calendars in one place
  • AI-powered intelligent planning
  • Easy task creation and automatic scheduling
  • Doesn’t let you forget about commitments
  • Tells you exactly what to do next
  • Create tasks from Slack messages or emails
  • Assign projects and tasks to team members efficiently
  • Protects chunks of time on your calendar for uninterrupted work (time blocking)

2. Clockwise — great for organizing meetings and tasks

A fresh perspective on calendar management. It doesn't just show you tasks and meetings, it adjusts your calendar to help you achieve the team's objectives and remain productive.

Clockwise tries to make your calendar work better for you. It can move around meetings to help you get more focus time. Integration with other calendar applications is seamless.

Clockwise reserves time blocks in the calendar that are of a longer duration so that you can focus on important tasks without being disturbed by a surprise meeting. It shows that you're unavailable to other team members by integrating with Slack and other team collaboration tools.

Clockwise is also very adaptive. If something comes up out of the blue, the system can rearrange your schedule, reprioritizing your calendar events..

Standout features:

  • Smart calendar optimization
  • Auto-adjusting for priorities and time conflicts
  • Protected time blocks for focused work
  • Powerful integrations with other tools
  • Insights into your progress, focus, and productivity

3. Clara — great for scheduling meetings by email

Clara is your digital assistant whose sole responsibility is to arrange meetings for you when convenient.

‎You can talk to Clara as if she were a real person, as she speaks naturally when corresponding via email. All you need to do is CC Clara as you email someone about scheduling a call – and she’ll take over the process of finding the perfect time slot for both sides.

With these smart features, Clara can save you from the hassle of exchanging emails back and forth. She can handle the details and arrange the meeting while you focus on more important tasks.

Clara is also available 24/7, so she can reply immediately when the other person is active, making communication fast and efficient.

Standout features:

  • 24/7 AI personal assistant
  • Responds in a natural way
  • Takes time zones into account
  • Saves you lots of back-and-forth emails
  • Follows up automatically
  • Schedule meetings in your calendar and send invites

4. Trevor — great for managing daily meetings or task lists

A refreshing approach to daily planning, this AI assistant helps you have a clear, controlled, focused day.

Trevor offers a range of daily planning and time-blocking solutions to help you arrange important jobs and manage daily tasks. Instead of feeling overwhelmed with a long list of tasks, you can manage them visually by setting aside specific time frames in your calendar and letting Trevor assign your work according to those time slots.

It gives you a live look at all your day-to-day tasks and creates comprehensive reports so you can keep an eye on every detail. Aside from scheduling and planning, Trevor can also set up task durations automatically and offer scheduling suggestions.

Standout features:

  • Auto-assign tasks
  • AI-powered scheduling and meeting suggestions
  • AI-enabled scheduling process
  • Deadline alerts
  • Visual task manager
  • Daily planning
  • Time-blocking
  • Task prioritization
  • Daily task lists
  • Real-time schedule overview

5. Kronologic — great for sales team schedules

Kronologic has been created as a specialized scheduling tool to help sales teams organize their interactions with prospective buyers.

‎The AI assistant's main objective is to boost conversion rates along the sales process with automated scheduling.

Kronologic can schedule calls with leads right after they fill out a form, at a time that is suitable for both parties.

This software incorporates NLP to quickly and easily understand and act on rescheduling requests, making it incredibly easy and efficient to use.

Standout features:

  • Automated scheduling can be done right away when a lead form is submitted
  • NLP can be used for rescheduling requests
  • Scheduling can be optimized for the Sales team with high-density scheduling

3 tips to make the most of your AI scheduling assistant

Get even more out of your AI scheduling assistant with these tips:

Try it out and learn

Play around with your AI assistant for a while to find out what it can and can't do.

To see how well it works, give it different kinds of scheduling tasks and test it with a few (different) scenarios, like a conflict or double booking.

Use productivity features

Use features that help you get more things done.

For example, many AI assistants can help you set reminders and send messages (freeing up even more time from tedious admin tasks).

Also, most of the apps on this list have time-blocking features that can help you with deep work. Lean on these features to help you protect your head-down time.

Make the most out of integrations

Some apps can take data from emails, chats, or even posts on LinkedIn to set up tasks and meetings for you. You can use these integration features to help you set up your own tasks or to delegate work.

Plan effortlessly with an AI schedule assistant

The tools in our list are among the best AI-powered scheduling apps on the market.

While they all cater to your scheduling needs, Motion goes a few steps further in improving your team collaboration, task management, project management, and time orchestration.

Aside from offering AI-based scheduling features, Motion provides more smart features than most solutions on this list.

As if that wasn't enough, Motion also lets you test its services for free. It's easy to tap into Motion's immense scheduling and management power and transform how you communicate, collaborate, and conduct business.

Sign up for your 7-day free trial.

Motion Blog
Written by Motion Blog