Objectives

What are you trying to accomplish?

• Use the Scheduling Poll function in Microsoft Outlook to gather availability from one or more individual(s) for a new event/meeting.
• If you regularly send out the same types of meetings with only 1 attendee, you may wish to explore Microsoft Bookings as a potential option.

Prerequisites

What do you need in order to accomplish your objectives?

• Microsoft 365 Login
• At least one individual requesting a meeting

Instructions

Step-by-step instructions for accomplishing your objectives.
 

1. Create a new event in Outlook
• Add attendee(s)
2. Create scheduling poll
• select days & times
3. Send scheduling poll
4. Book the meeting

Dashboard: https://outlook.office365.com/findtime/dashboard

Step 1: Create a new event

• From Outlook Calendar, select New Event (2). Add the title of your event and attendees (3) to your event in order to access the scheduling poll (4) options.

Step 2: Create your scheduling poll

The scheduling poll will then prompt you to select times. You can first cycle through the dates you need (5), and then for each day, select the timeslots (6) you would like to use. If you are unavailable during a particular timeslot, it will be indicated with a purple or red icon. Selecting Next (7) will bring you to an overview page displaying all of the selected timeslots, and settings options.

You can then review and adjust (8) any selected times. Once completed, you can modify Poll Settings (9). By default, schedule when attendees reach consensus is selected. You can then Create the poll (10) and move to sending it.

Step 3: Send your scheduling poll

After you've finished customizing your poll and selected to Create Poll, it will automatically paste it into an email, with the attendees included as the recipients. The default module that gets added to the body of the email can be adjusted further if needed - just be cautious not to break the Vote link.

Step 4: Accessing your Scheduling Dashboard & Booking

From the generated poll invite, if you select View all your polls, this will take you to your scheduling poll dashboard. This is where you can modify or cancel any existing polls, or if you selected to NOT auto schedule based on consensus, you can book from here, or the response email that is received.

Response Email Example: