Tech Tip: How to create a scheduling poll using Outlook • Blisstech Solutions

Welcome to a new Tuesday tech tip video where we will be exploring how to create a scheduling poll using Outlook.

You know what it’s like when you are trying to get everyone together for a meeting. Trying to find a time that suits everyone can be a real pain! There are third-party applications, such as Calendly and Doodle, that will allow you to simplify this, but did you know there is a new scheduling poll feature built into Outlook?

This will allow you to send a list of possible times and get people to vote on them. Once everyone has voted it will automatically schedule the meeting.

Cool eh? And what’s more, it is included in your Microsoft 365 subscription.

This video will show you how to use it.

Enjoy.

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Blisstech Solutions Tuesday Tech Tips.

In today’s tip, I’m going to show you how you can create a scheduling poll in Outlook where you can send a list of times that you’re available for a meeting and enable other people to vote on those times, so you don’t have to keep going backwards and forwards, asking people when they’re available. And it’s particularly useful if you’re trying to arrange a meeting with quite a few people.

This is built into Outlook. It’s quite a new feature, so you may not have seen it before, and I’m going to show you how it works.
I’ve already opened a new e-mail I’ve put in some recipients that I want to attend the meeting, and then what I’m going to do is in the Message menu we have New Scheduling Poll.

If I click that it’s going to pop up and it’s going to give us a few options.

So, we have the meeting duration, we have a date when we can select that meeting for, and I’m going to select next Thursday. We can schedule within working hours or outside the working hours, but I’m going to leave it as working hours. And then we can select some options for meeting times that we want to offer.

We then click Next and then we have further settings that we can select.

  • The first one will automatically schedule the meeting when everybody’s reached a consensus.
  • The next will put all the times as tentative in your diary until it’s been the vote has completed.
  • The next will send you emails with updates on the pole,
  • The next requires attendees to verify their identity so that will require that they authenticate
  • The final one is locking it so people can’t make any changes.

So, I’m going to leave all that a default, I’m going to put in a location and then I’m going to create the poll.

This adds the poll to the e-mail and when I click send all the recipients are going to get an e-mail to ask them to vote on the poll.

There are quite a few steps involved in the process behind the scenes, so I’m going to show you one I made earlier so you can see what it will look like from a recipient’s point of view and then see what it looks like when people have voted on the poll.

So here we see one of the recipients has received an e-mail asking them to vote on the poll. When they click that button, they’ll be taken to another page where they’ll be asked to verify their identity, either by logging into Microsoft 365 or, if they don’t have a 365 account, they can have a one-time password emailed to them.

Then they get to choose which options work for them, so they select all the required options and then they click Vote.

When everybody’s been through that process, what will happen is I will receive an e-mail telling me that everyone has voted and it will be automatically added to my diary.

It will also send a meeting invite, from me to all recipients in the poll at the time that was chosen so that they accept it and add the meeting to their diary.

So, let’s just show you what that looks like when I receive that e-mail.
Here we can see that we received an e-mail that the poll has reached a consensus. Everyone will have automatically been emailed a meeting invite for the time that everybody can make which they can then accept.

So, this is a really simple way of allowing you to arrange a meeting by offering people multiple options of times and then automatically scheduling it when everybody decided on a time.

We hope you found this tip useful.  If you want more tech tips, take a look at our Learning Zone.

More Content

A person in a hoodie surrounded by green cipher text

3 Things You Must Do to Protect Against Ransomware

Ransomware is an increasingly common and devastating cyberattack that can happen to any business. The ransomware attacks that get the most media attention are those on high profile companies, but ransomware attacks on small businesses are increasing too. Many smaller...

Tech Tip: How to Sync Teams Files to Your Computer

Hello everyone, welcome to a new Tuesday Two Minute Tech Tip.    👉 Do you use Microsoft 365?    👉 Do you need to collaborate on documents with your colleagues?    👉 Do you want to do this using the same familiar Windows...

Are your productivity tools actually slowing you down?

If productivity tools aren’t embedded properly within your business, tasks can actually end up taking longer than they should.

Is that Chrome extension filled with malware?

Is that Chrome extension filled with malware?

Chrome extensions are great for boosting productivity and saving time. But if they’re not the real deal, you could be at risk from malware. We tell you how to stay protected.

Man with magnifying glass

Cyber Essentials: A Guide to CE and its Benefits

Many people have heard of Cyber Essentials (CE), but do you know what it is and what benefits it can bring to your business? This article will discuss what cyber essentials is and how it can help your business and the role that a Cyber Essentials assessor plays in...

5 steps to help recover from a cyber attack

Read this BEFORE you get hit with a cyber attack The worst time to decide how to deal with a cyber-attack is when you’re in the middle of one. Unfortunately, you’ll probably need to deal with it eventually—small and medium-sized businesses are prime targets for...
Managed IT Services consultant connects a network cable into switch

What are the benefits of outsourcing IT support?

Have you ever started a DIY task only to wish you had just called in an expert?  Your IT support should be no different. Many business owners think that they can handle their IT systems themselves.  However, unless they have the experience and finger on the pulse of...
Unwrap the gift of knowledge: 5 free AI courses by Microsoft

Unwrap the gift of knowledge: 5 free AI training courses by Microsoft

Microsoft has a little business-boosting gift that you won’t want to miss out on… five free courses about AI. We have the details, and the links to the courses.

Before you replace your slow PCs…

Before you replace your slow PCs…

Windows PCs running slowly? It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to replace them. There are some other ways you can give things a boost. We’ll tell you how.

When can you finally forget your password?

Passkeys are set to take over from traditional passwords to give us a safer, more secure way of logging into our online accounts.

Share This
Contact
Love Lane
Cleobury Mortimer
Shropshire DY14 8PE

01299 382 321
[email protected]
Copyright © 2024 Blisstech Solution Ltd
Registered No: 08125391 VAT No : 307 5490 05