Microsoft Outlook - Adding a Scheduling Poll for an upcoming meeting

This feature is really useful if you want to create a meeting with multiple people but aren’t sure when everyone is free and available. Adding a Scheduling Poll to your meeting invite does all the hard work for you and lets the attendees select the best time for them.

Not a fan of watching Videos? A how to guide is below.

Through Calendar (Recommended)

1. Log into the Outlook Web App.

2. Click on the Calendar icon in the lefthand menu.

3. Click on the New event icon.

4. A new event email will open. Add your required (and/or optional) attendees, and a title for the email. Your attendees' availability will show up in the date/time selector under Suggested times if they use a Virginia Tech Outlook calendar. There are multiple options in this window for creating meetings and polls. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are only covering the 'Scheduling poll' option, starting with the next step.

5. Once all of your attendees are added, click on the Scheduling poll icon.

6. Choose the options for Time zone, Duration, Date, and whether to limit poll choices to Meeting Hours (normal workday hours) only.

7. The next two steps are iterated through until you have sufficient meeting times for your colleagues to choose from: Select a date.Select one or more times on that date that you would like to include on the Scheduling poll. If a person's Exchange Online calendar information is available, you will see their icon as either green (available) or red (unavailable). If a person's Exchange Online calendar is not available, you will see their icon as purple (unknown). You can mouse over an icon to see their name.

8. When you are satisfied with the date/time combinations, click the Next button.

9. Configure location information and any additional poll settings, then click Create poll.

10. Schedule poll will attach the poll to your email. Review your email, and when you are satisfied, click Send.

11. The time slots you have selected will show up on your calendar. If you have configured your poll to Hold selected times on my calendar, you will still see it on your calendar with the [Hold] prefix added to the title. If this option is off, the title will have [Draft] appended to it, and you will still be considered available for that time slot to others.