Scheduling Meetings with Find Time

Scheduling Meetings with Find Time

Always trying to figure out the best time for a meeting? Microsoft's built-in Scheduling Assistant (part of Outlook's New Meeting interface) allows you to add people and rooms, so you can try to find the best time. It also gives you a "suggested times" area in the right-hand pane that helps you quickly identify slots that are open in all attendees' (and room) schedules. 

But what if you're unsure if your coworkers are keeping their calendars up-to-date (read more about this here), or you want to give people a few options, in case they need to prep for the meeting? In that case, Microsoft's new add-in, Find Time/New Scheduling Poll, for Outlook (and Outlook Web App) allows you to create a quick, easy poll that lets your coworkers select their preferred times, from the dates and times you've selected. 

In Outlook you will see it in the menu at the top of a new message, with an icon and the title "New Scheduling Poll":



New Meeting Poll

Using Find Time

  • Start a new email, or reply to an existing email. 
  • Make sure all desired attendees are in the To line of your email.
  • Click New Scheduling Poll.
  • A new Scheduling Poll pane opens to the right. 
  • Choose the duration of your meeting (or use the default).
  • Use the date changer to select a day that is open for all attendees (you will see their availability below, next to the times).
  • Click a time that you'd like to add to the poll. You may click as many options as you'd like, and you can click back and forth on different dates. 
  • After selecting all the possible times you'd like, click Next.


Select times for your poll.


Poll Options

  • Location: Add a location, or leave blank. You can also click to indicate it will be an online meeting (and you will need to add the online meeting details/links AFTER your poll reaches a consensus and the meeting has been scheduled).
  • Schedule when attendees reach consensus: If this is enabled, Find Time will pick the most popular of the agreed upon times for all attendees and schedule the meeting. Attendees will also be able to indicate that a time is ok vs. preferred, as well as when they cannot attend.
  • Hold selected times on my calendar: While waiting for the voting to be completed by all, this allows those times slots to be marked as tentative on your calendar, so that they won't be available for other meetings. Once a final time is decided, those tentative holds will be released, and only the final meeting time will remain on your calendar.
  • Notify me about poll updates: You will get an email after each person votes.
  • Require attendees to verify their identity: Not something that is needed in our organization. (It prevents anonymous voting, but our accounts will automatically identify us in the Microsoft system.)
  • Lock poll for attendees: This prevents attendees from adding alternative dates and times or adding or removing attendees.


Meeting options

Add to Email

Once you click Create poll, in adds the poll widget to the body of an email, with instructions for the recipients to Vote.

You will also see the option to edit the poll in the right-hand pane, and you can see the current status by clicking View poll details.

NOTE: After sending the initial email, you can view the current status (who has voted, edit some options, add people, etc.) by going to the sent email and clicking Select options. This will bring you to the web dashboard for this meeting. You will also see links in the attendee response and final consensus emails, if you opted-in on those when creating the poll.



Finalize your poll info, including the subject of the meeting.

Dashboard

You can also manage your upcoming poll requests, and view completed and cancelled polls, by visiting the FindTime Dashboard:

https://outlook.office.com/findtime/dashboard


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