Scheduling Poll
| Important: As of December 11th, 2023, the FindTime add-in was renamed Scheduling Poll as a native feature in Outlook. See more details on Microsoft's forum post. |
Scheduling Poll: the convenient native scheduling feature in Outlook
We are excited to introduce Scheduling poll, bringing the capabilities of FindTime add-in as a native feature in Outlook. Scheduling poll is currently available to all users of Outlook on the Web and Mac.
Scheduling poll makes scheduling easier and more efficient by allowing the host (scheduler) to propose multiple times/dates to invitation recipients through a meeting poll which they vote on.
Scheduling poll works on Office 365 Outlook for the Web, Outlook 2021, and Outlook for Mac 2021. Only the meeting scheduler needs to have an Office 365 account, Outlook and Scheduling poll; invitees/attendees do not.
Scheduling Poll articles from Microsoft
Create a poll using Scheduling Poll
Scheduling Poll organizer dashboard
Privacy and personal data protection
Auto scheduling in Scheduling Poll
Include an online meeting with Scheduling Poll
Get Started
Note: access to Schedule poll is NOT required for recipients to vote on meeting times, it is only required to schedule them.
Microsoft has a step-by-step tutorial on their website for how to create an invitation via Schedule poll.
Organizers can also set up auto scheduling with Schedule poll. Visit Microsof't auto scheduling page for instructions.
When you are invited to a meeting scheduled with Schedule poll you will receive an email that contains the invitation message and a link to "Select options".
Clicking the link will take you to the Schedule poll web page and the poll for the meeting which you've been invited. You do not need to have access to Schedule poll in order to make selections.
See How to vote for complete details.
About reserving rooms in an invitation:
If you would like to reserve a conference room, add it to the TO field along with recipients. The room will not be polled, but this will allow you to see when the room is available so that you can be sure to select and propose dates when it is free. Once the vote is finished and you schedule the meeting the room will be scheduled as it is done in non-polled invitations.
Where did FindTime go?
Simply put, FindTime was renamed by Microsoft to Schedule polls when the add-in was made into a native feature within Outlook.
What do I need to do to transition from FindTime to Scheduling Poll?
Nothing! When Scheduling poll is rolled out to your tenant, the entry point to the FindTime Add-in will be hidden and you should see a button to open the Scheduling poll pane in the Outlook compose ribbon instead (more details here). We have made UX updates to help improve the experience. The functionality should remain the same and you should be able to create new polls just like before in the native application. Changes will still be made in the online portal.
What happens to my existing polls?
All the polls you created through the FindTime add-in should remain active and actionable through the voting page and the polls dashboard even if the add-in is deprecated and replaced by the Scheduling poll UI. The only thing that has changed is the way you create a poll.
What’s the same
As we bring Scheduling poll directly to Outlook, users can expect to have a similar set of features and workflow as the existing FindTime add-in.
What’s different
Scheduling poll uses the same modern design and framework we use in the updated Outlook on the web and the new Outlook for Windows, making it easier to maintain and enhance for the future.