What happens when two candidate times tie exactly?

The candidate producing the lower cumulative inconvenience score across participants wins. If that is still tied, the earlier-listed candidate is chosen so the result stays deterministic.

Does the rotation ever fully equalize the inconvenience?

It aims to keep each participant's running total as close as possible over the full rotation, though a perfectly even split is not always achievable depending on how many candidates and participants are involved.

Fair Meeting Rotation Planner

Enter each participant's zone and comfortable local-hour window, plus two or more candidate UTC meeting hours. Over a stated number of occurrences, the planner rotates between candidates to keep everyone's cumulative inconvenience as balanced as possible.

Just need one meeting, not a fairness rotation across many? See World Meeting Planner.

Want to learn more?

What Makes a Cross-Timezone Meeting Rotation Fair

Worked example

Tokyo and New York, each comfortable meeting between 9 AM and 6 PM their own local time, rotate between two candidate meeting times, one at 4:00 UTC and one at 18:00 UTC, across four weekly occurrences. The first occurrence picks whichever candidate produces the lower combined inconvenience, then each following occurrence factors in the running totals so far, alternating which side ends up with the less convenient slot as the two participants' cumulative scores even out over the four weeks. Neither side is stuck with the inconvenient time every single week, which is exactly the outcome a single fixed meeting time could never produce on its own.

Common mistakes

Expecting a fixed, unchanging meeting time out of a rotation planner. The entire point of a rotation is that the chosen candidate changes from one occurrence to the next as the running scores shift.
Entering only one candidate meeting time, which leaves nothing for the rotation to actually alternate between.

Limitations

Fairness here is measured only against the comfort windows and candidate times you enter. This does not know about any individual participant's own separate calendar conflicts beyond those stated comfort windows.

Frequently asked questions

What happens when two candidate times tie exactly?: The candidate producing the lower cumulative inconvenience score across participants wins. If that is still tied, the earlier-listed candidate is chosen so the result stays deterministic.
Does the rotation ever fully equalize the inconvenience?: It aims to keep each participant's running total as close as possible over the full rotation, though a perfectly even split is not always achievable depending on how many candidates and participants are involved.