Appointment negotiation systems and methods

1. A method performed by an appointment negotiation system, the appointment negotiation system including a processor, the method comprising:

receiving, by the appointment negotiation system from a remote device, a request to generate appointment request messages for a group of members, the request from the remote device including two or more plans for a meeting;

determining, for each member in the group of members, a corresponding messaging protocol to be used for communicating with the member, wherein the corresponding messaging protocol is at least one of a messaging protocol for short message service (SMS) text messages or a messaging protocol for a user application having push notifications;

generating and sending a corresponding appointment request message to a corresponding remote device for each member of the group of members using the corresponding messaging protocol for the member, the corresponding appointment request message for each member of the group of members including the two or more plans for the meeting, the two or more plans each comprising corresponding time information;

receiving responses from the group of members wherein, for each member of the group of members, a corresponding response to the corresponding appointment request message is received using the corresponding messaging protocol;

updating a corresponding calendar application of each of at least a first member and a second member of the group of members by adding a corresponding calendar event with a time for an appointment for the meeting that is based on the received responses; and

synchronizing the appointment between a first remote device of the first member and a second remote device of the second member such that a change in the time for the appointment made using the first remote device is automatically applied to an appointment entry for the appointment on the second remote device;

wherein the corresponding calendar application for the first member is a different calendar application than the corresponding calendar application for the second member.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising tracking a corresponding geolocation of each member of the group of members and alerting a member of the group of members when one or more other members of the group of members are in a geographic vicinity of the member.

3. An apparatus comprising:

an appointment negotiation system comprising one or more processing circuits configured to execute computer code to perform a process comprising:

receiving two or more plans for a meeting from a remote device of an organizer, each plan of the two or more plans including corresponding time information for the meeting between the organizer and at least two invitees;

generating a corresponding text message for each of one or more of the at least two invitees, the corresponding text message including the corresponding time information for each of the two or more plans;

sending the corresponding text message to a corresponding remote device of each of the one or more of the at least two invitees using a text messaging protocol for short message service (SMS) text messages;

generating a corresponding push notification for each of at least one of the at least two invitees, the corresponding push notification including the corresponding time information for each of the two or more plans;

sending the corresponding push notification to a corresponding remote device of each of the at least one of the at least two invitees using a messaging protocol for a user application having push notifications;

receiving, using the text messaging protocol for SMS text messages, one or more text message responses from the one or more of the at least two invitees, each of the one or more text message responses indicating a corresponding vote among the two or more plans;

receiving, from the user application executed on a corresponding remote device using the messaging protocol for the user application, at least one response from each of the at least one of the at least two invitees where the at least one response indicates a corresponding vote among the two or more plans;

determining based at least partially on the one or more text message responses from the one or more of the at least two invitees and the at least one response from the user application for each of the at least one of the at least two invitees a time for an appointment for the meeting;

updating a corresponding calendar application of each of at least a first invitee and a second invitee of the at least two invitees by adding a corresponding calendar event with the time for the appointment for the meeting; and

synchronizing the appointment between a first remote device of the first invitee and a second remote device of the second invitee such that a change in the time for the appointment made using the first remote device is automatically applied to an appointment entry for the appointment on the second remote device;

wherein the corresponding calendar application for the first invitee is a different calendar application than the corresponding calendar application for the second invitee.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 , the process further comprising receiving from a corresponding remote device of an invitee of the at least two invitees a proposal for an alternative plan that the organizer and the other invitees of the at least two invitees can approve or reject.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 , the process further comprising responsive to receiving an approval or rejection for the alternative plan, sending a status message to indicate the approval or rejection.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 , wherein the status message is sent to the remote device of the organizer.

7. The apparatus of claim 3 , the process further comprising placing a placeholder for each of the two or more plans in a calendar application of the organizer and a calendar application of each of the at least two invitees prior to booking the meeting.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 , the process further comprising updating the calendar application of the organizer and the calendar application of each of the at least two invitees to remove each of the plans of the two or more plans that were not booked after determining the time for the appointment for the meeting.

9. The method of claim 1 ,

wherein said generating includes generating, for each member of the group of members for which it is determined that the corresponding messaging protocol is the messaging protocol for SMS text messages, the corresponding appointment request message as a text message including the two or more plans and information for specifying in the corresponding response a corresponding vote on the two or more plans.

10. The method of claim 9 ,

wherein said generating further includes generating, for each member of the group of members for which it is determined that the corresponding messaging protocol is the messaging protocol for the user application having push notifications, the corresponding appointment request message as a push notification including application data for causing a graphical user interface to display the corresponding time for each of the two or more plans as selectable items in the graphical user interface.

11. The method of claim 1 ,

wherein said generating includes generating, for each member of the group of members for which it is determined that the corresponding messaging protocol is the messaging protocol for the user application having push notifications, the corresponding appointment request message as a push notification including application data for causing a graphical user interface to display the corresponding time for each of the two or more plans as selectable items in the graphical user interface.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the corresponding appointment request message that is sent to the first remote device of the first member includes calendar application data for causing the first remote device to automatically create a corresponding calendar entry for each corresponding time of the two or more plans where each corresponding calendar entry is shaded with a particular color that indicates a tentative calendar entry.

13. The method of claim 3 , wherein said updating comprises:

updating the corresponding calendar application of each of at least the first invitee and the second invitee by adding the corresponding calendar event as a confirmed calendar event with the time for the appointment for the meeting and removing tentative calendar entries for unselected times for the meeting that were proposed in the two or more plans.