Julie’s Handbook or How to Get Most of Your AI Assistant

Julien Hobeika

This guide is intended for all our users who are just looking to get started with Julie or to those who want to improve Julie’s efficiency.

1. The Basics

1.1 The Request
1.2 Don’t forget What
1.3 Don’t forget Who
1.4 Don’t forget Where
1.5 Don’t forget Timezone
1.6 Don’t forget Time Constraints
1.7 What about Context?

2. Advanced

2.1 Waiting for your contact availabilities
2.2 Dealing with Priority
2.3 Just sending out invites
2.4 Dealing with an assistant
2.5 Understanding how Julie sees your calendar and your free slots

3. Few words on Enterprise scheduling

1. The Basics

For the Basics four Characters will be used to explain all the different situations you can encounter: You, Julie (of course), Max and Helen

1.1 The Request

You can ask Julie to handle 3 main types of requests. Usually the request should be present in the first email you send in a thread.

Here are a few examples interactions with Helen

Hi Helen,
Julie (CC’ed) will help us schedule a meeting together

Hi Julie,
Please reschedule my 11am call with Helen

Hi Julie,
Can you please add the flight information below to my calendar

And one very important thing, though Julie can be very smart, always assume that:

Threading is not an easy task so we make sure internally that our system can make the difference and make exceptions to those rules. But as a best practice you on your end should always presume this.

1.2 What

Often when you send a request for scheduling you should keep in mind that Julie can’t know what you’re thinking unless you tell her.

Consider an email like this replying to one of your contact

Thanks for contacting me,
Julie (cc’ed) will help us schedule

Here you may want Julie to dig into the context present in “quoted emails”. We’ll talk about this in a bit. But the basics are the basics, always assume that Julie works as a human being. If information is easier to get, she will be better at performing exactly how you expect her to perform.

So, never forget to tell Julie what kind of meeting she should schedule

Julie (cc’ed) will help us schedule a call

1.3 Who

Once you’ve specified the What, ask yourself if it’s clear Who Julie should schedule with. If in you’re email there is only Max and Julie as recipients, It’s pretty easy but consider the situation below:

Thanks for the intro Helen,
Max, nice to e-meeting you.
Julie will help us schedule a call.

This case is tricky, depending on your business habits it could mean that you want the call to be between You, Max and Helen but it often means that you want the call to be only between You and Max.

By default, Julie considers all the recipients to be participants of a meeting unless it’s very clear that some recipients should be excluded. 

So if you don’t want to wonder whether your sentence is ambiguous or not and you want Julie to schedule a call with only Max and you consider putting Helen in BCC

Thanks Helen (BCC’ed) for the intro,
Max, nice to e-meet you.
Julie will help us schedule a call

If you don’t want to put Helen in BCC because she needs to stay in the loop for some reasons, just be EXTRA clear that she’ll not be in the call with something like:

Thanks Helen for the intro,
Max, nice to e-meet you.
Julie will help schedule a call for both of us

1.4 Where

This an important one. This is important because if you say:

Julie will schedule a meeting

Julie won’t have any information when suggesting time slots regarding the potential travel time needed between this meeting, the previous and next meetings around a particular suggested slot.

You can correct this simply saying:

Julie will schedule a meeting at the office

If by default all your meetings are at your office, just write an email to Julie now (if not already done) to tell her that without precision, she should assume by default the meeting is at your office

If you’re a salesperson, you can be in a different situation and you may always move to your prospect/client. So say something like this:

Julie will schedule a meeting at your office

If by default all your meetings are at your prospect’s/client’s office, just write an email to Julie now (if not already done) to tell her that without precision, she should assume by default your interlocutor will choose the place of the meeting.

1.5 Timezone

Imagine you’re in NYC and you want to schedule a call with Max in San Francisco. Julie can send time slots to Max directly in Pacific Time. But as always you need to tell Julie because she won’t know!

Julie will schedule a call.
@Julie, Max is based in San Francisco

1.6 Time Constraints

Sometimes you’ll have information about time constraints that can help Julie get to a time slot that works faster.

Usually if you have time constraints it means that we’re dealing with a prioritization problem which we talk about in the Advanced Section of this handbook

So here, we’ll say that you’ve just learnt from Helen’s co-worker that she’s on vacation this week, so if you want to schedule a meeting with her you’ll say something like:

Hi Helen,
Let’s get together when you’re back from vacation.
Julie (cc’ed) will schedule a meeting at your office next week or after

1.7 Context and Julie, how does it work ?

We often say that Julie is perfect! The right mix between the Machine and Human. The Machine helps with efficiency the Human helps with subtlety and context.

What it means is that Julie will never be out of touch or completely stuck on a request because the human can take over. Even if you wrote something like:

Juli’ll skedul a mitin at ur ofice nXt wk or after

We will have the AI and a human reading it, so in the end, we’ll get what you meant.

However consider the situation where a lot of information is present in quoted emails:

Sure, Julie will help Schedule

>>From Max to You
>>cool. let’s meet for a coffee then
>>>> From you to Max
>>>> Hey Max, after your vacation could be great

>>>>>> From Max to you
>>>>>> Hey, I’m on vacation for the next two weeks. But can we meet ?

In the above email, Julie wasn’t CC’ed in all the emails between Max and you, only in the last one. So what will Julie be able to get ?

And that’s the thing, in theory she should get everything, because Julie is perfect. But in reality, the AI will sometimes have a hard time sorting all the information lost in many lengthy quoted emails and the human supervisor may also miss it because sometimes the information Julie should use will be lost in a quoted emails like this:

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It may be pretty clear for you that Max prefers to do the meeting on Thursday because you spend a lot of time working with Max and you put extra attention reading all of this. But if the AI misses it and because it’s lost in a lengthy email, the human supervisor may miss it (even if he shouldn’t)

So to avoid all of this, it’s best to spend an extra 5 seconds to rephrase your request:

Julie will help schedule a coffee on Thursdays at your office when you’re back from vacation in 2 weeks.

This can seems like redundant information but this will make sure Julie works super smoothly and super quick!

2. Advanced Tips

2.1 Busy Contacts: The two forms of scheduling requests

In the Basics we explained the 3 forms of request you can ask Julie. But if you actually want to get the most out of Julie, the “Schedule” request can have 2 forms that are interpreted differently.

First: Julie sends your availabilities immediately

This is the default behavior. If you say

Julie will help us schedule a…

or

Julie will send you some times that work for…

Julie will immediately send times. It’s not limited to this formulation. As this is the default behavior a lot of request formulations, even the most ambiguous ones, can lead to Julie sending time slots.

However if you’re explicit you can trigger a second type of behavior

Second: Julie waits for your contact’s availabilities before sending yours

if you say something explicit enough like this

When are you available? Julie will confirm my availabilities depending on yours

or

What are your best availabilities next week? Julie will be able to send out invites or get back to you with other options if yours don’t work

or anything else that makes clear that Julie shouldn’t send availabilities first will work.

This is very useful, especially if you’re dealing with an important contact and you may want to have the opportunity to reschedule something on your end depending on what you receive.

And this leads to the next tip: How do you deal with priority

2.2 Dealing with Priority

There are 3 mains scenarios in which you need to use priority tips with Julie:

a. The meeting with your contact is a priority and you asked Julie to wait for availabilities before sending yours

In this scenario you will send this first:

Hi Helen,
What are your best availabilities next week? Julie will be able to send out invites or get back to you with other options if yours don’t work

And then you will send a second one only to Julie saying:

Julie, whatever she answers, just reschedule what I have if it doesn’t work. This is top priority

or

Julie, depending on what she answers if it can work by rescheduling my Call with Mark James, my meeting with Max or any other meeting I have on Thursday 25th, just do it.

in that case if it doesn’t work by rescheduling one of the specified events, Julie suggest new time slots in response to your contact’s availabilities.

b. The meeting with your contact is a priority and you want Julie to send availabilities first

In that case, the priority needs to be specified with explicit time constraints like this:

Hi Helen,
Sure we absolutely need to meet this week.
Julie will help us find a time that works.

That way, Julie will do whatever she can to find a slot for this week trying to match Helen’s availabilities and your remaining options this week. If she finds that no option works, she may get back to you and ask if she’s allowed to reschedule something in order for this meeting to fit this week.

c. The meeting is not urgent and the 2 coming weeks are pretty packed

In order for you not to have Julie to fill your last remaining free slots with a not urgent meeting you can simply say:

Hi Helen,
Sure, let’s meet after the 10th. It will be easier.
Julie will help us find a time that works.

That way you can keep free slots for last minute urgent meetings.

If you absolutely need those slots to work on something, just block those slots in your calendar! It’s a safe bet and you won’t have to tell Julie to schedule in 2 weeks to avoid those slots.

2.3 Just sending out invites

Some of you like to CC Julie at the end of the scheduling process with some contacts. When you want to do this, it’s often to ask Julie to add the event to your calendar (because she does that beautifully well) and send out invites. Just say something like this:

Perfect then, Julie (cc’ed) can send invites

Julie will read the quoted emails to understand what time has been decided. But remember if you think the quoted emails are messy and information on What, When, Who, Where are confused, just repeat them. It’s an added 5 sec of writing but it’s the insurance of having everything working smoothly

Perfect then! Julie (cc’ed) will send the invites for a coffee tomorrow 10 am at your office

2.4 Dealing with an assistant

First case: You have an assistant, Jim, and you want him to be able to send authorized request to Julie

That’s possible, just send an email to Julie saying that Jim needs to be authorized to send request on your behalf and then Jim will be able to send request related to your calendar like:

Hi Julie,
Can you reschedule the 10am phone call with Max tomorrow ?

Julie will interpret this request as if you were sending it.

Second case: You’re scheduling a meeting with Helen, who is assisted by Max.

Here in order not to confuse Julie and make sure she doesn’t think that Max is a participant, just explicit it with a sentence like this:

Hi Helen,
Sure let’s meet.  Julie can you coordinate with Max to schedule a meeting for Helen and I at our office next week?
Thanks

2.5 Understanding how Julie sees your calendar and your free slots

There are two main categories of events in your calendar: All day events and regular events.

About Regular Events

Regular events in your calendar events are used by Julie to know that:

  1. You’re not available during this time
  2. You may need travel time between two appointments

So as a good practice try to be as accurate as possible regarding the location of events you input by yourself in your calendar. Julie will always fill the location field as soon as she has it, so try to do the same in order for Julie to be as accurate as possible when she deals with your calendar.

By default if there is no location and the event is a “meeting” or an “appointment” she may think that it will take place at your office…

About All day events

Julie can use all day events along 3 cases:

a. No relevant information, free to book meetings

Consider an all day event that says: “Max’s Birthday” It’s probably just an information that Julie doesn’t even need to use.

As a good practice, you should make sure that those all day events are tagged as “available” in your calendar. This option is set by default for most calendars when you input an all day event.

b. Relevant information, but free to book meetings

Consider now that next week I have an all day event all week that says: “London” This is a very important piece of information for Julie because if you want here to schedule meetings while you are in London, Julie will know where to look. So if you say:

Hi Max,
I’ll be in London later this month, it would be great to get together. Julie (CC’d) will help us find a time to meet while I’m there.

Here Julie will be able to be very accurate by locating when exactly you’re in London this month and correctly handle the timezone difference in order for your events to be put correctly into your calendar.

As a good practice, you should also make sure that those all day events are tagged as “available” in your calendar. This option is set by default for most calendars when you input an all day event.

c. Not free to book meetings

Finally consider that you have an all day event that says: “Holidays”

Of course, you don’t want Julie to schedule meetings on those days and she’ll usually get it right. But as a good practice,  we specifically advise setting those kinds of events to “Busy” in your calendar. This option is often not ticked by default for all day event for most calendar systems.

We’re not asking you to set those events as “Busy” because Julie can’t make the difference it’s just because we may find other more ambiguous situations than the “Holidays” ones. Just consider the all day event: “MWC” (Mobile World Congress). Does it mean that you just put that on your calendar as a reminder or will you actually be busy being at this event those days?

If the event is just one day and you don’t want to bother setting the “busy” mode in your all day event, just create a regular event “MWC” from 6 am to 8 pm for example. Regular events are automatically set as “Busy” by most calendars!

3. Enterprise: A few things to keep in mind

Let’s talk a bit about what happens when you schedule meetings with colleagues depending on whether they are subscribers or not.

Basically what you need to keep in mind is that Julie doesn’t make a difference between a colleague (who isn’t a subscriber) and an external person.

a. Max and Helen are subscribers, colleagues of company WePopp and want to meet.

Here Julie will be able to find a common slot and create the meeting without any required action from Max nor Helen during the process.
However, you still need to launch the process by sending an email to Julie. For example, Helen will send an email to Max with Julie in CC like this:

Hi Max,
Let’s meet next week, Julie will find us a common time

And that’s it! Neither Helen nor Max have to do anything more.

b.  The meeting involves internal WePopp employees (They are all subscribers) as well as an external person

Let’s take the example of a meeting with Max, Helen, You (all subscribers) and an external person X. If you say something like:

Hi X,
We want to schedule a meeting with you at the Office.
Julie (cc’ed) will help us find a common time for you to come by and meet Max, Helen and I.

Then Julie will get back to X and say:
In this example your Name is Reader 😉

Hi X,
Reader, Max and Helen would be available for an appointment at the Office address:
– Date, Time
– Date, Time
– Date, Time
What time would work best for you?

c. What happens when scheduling a meeting with a WePopp colleague who does not have a Julie Desk subscription

Let’s take the previous example but let’s say that Max is not a subscriber. You send an email to X, Max, Helen and Julie CC’ed :

Hi X,
We want to schedule an appointment with you at the Office.
Julie (cc’ed) will help us find a common time for you to come by and meet Max, Helen and I.

Because Max is not a subscriber Julie will answer this:

Hi,
Reader and Helen would be available for an appointment at the Office address:
– Date, Time
– Date, Time
– Date, Time
Max, X, What time would work best for you?

And she will gather answers/availabilities from Max and X during the scheduling process as if Max were an external person.

To conclude the above covers the basics, advanced features and how Julie deals with scheduling appointments with colleagues whether they are subscribers or not. This is all to show how Julie Desk works and helps in many different situations that almost anyone would experience when it comes to scheduling meetings and appointments. These are all real life scenarios where Artificial Intelligence helps save time and effort.

For more information or comments, feel free to visit our FAQ page or contact our team.