Forum Discussion
Introducing Scheduling poll in Outlook!
Announcing FindTime as a native feature in Outlook!
We are excited to introduce Scheduling poll, bringing the capabilities of FindTime as a native feature in Outlook. Scheduling poll is currently available to all users of Outlook on the Web and Mac. It is available to Classic Outlook for Windows users in Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel, and Semi-Annual Enterprise Preview. It is now available to Classic Outlook users on the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Version 2308) as of January 2024, and will be available to the Semi-Annual Extended Channel later in June 2024.
Users who do not have access to Scheduling Poll yet can either switch to the Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel, or Semi-Annual Enterprise Preview in Classic Outlook for Windows; or they can use Outlook on the Web to create polls. Please go https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/scheduling-poll-articles-7b5ff6c7-4f65-48e6-89b8-3f053c40e382 for more details on 'Scheduling poll' feature.
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 https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcommunity.microsoft.com%2Ft5%2Foutlook-blog%2Ffaster-with-a-modern-design-and-new-features-the-new-outlook-on%2Fba-p%2F735222&data=05%7C01%7Csarichardson%40microsoft.com%7C9a9485b7101d4aaff29c08da6a6fc7f9%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637939325631538316%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kFDYOHhuRskiCb2vqvFKSWldi4v79%2FAsFZTz%2BndEoH8%3D&reserved=0 and the https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Finsider.office.com%2Fen-us%2Fblog%2Fthe-new-outlook-for-windows-helps-you-be-more-productive-and-in-control-of-your-inbox&data=05%7C01%7Csarichardson%40microsoft.com%7C9a9485b7101d4aaff29c08da6a6fc7f9%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637939325631538316%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=LwQYSXklRrUxLTaFsnW24bkPmrhxWlBIcuHjUWi7GEQ%3D&reserved=0, making it easier to maintain and enhance for the future.
Important: What is happening to the FindTime add-in?
The FindTime add-in will stop working and be removed from Outlook for Windows, Web and Mac. Scheduling Poll is the replacement feature, which is built directly into Outlook clients for all users as a native feature.
When this will happen:
You can expect the FindTime add-in to stop working as early as December 11, 2023. We will start making the change on December 11, 2023, and expect to complete it by the end of that week.
How this will affect your organization:
Once the change has rolled out users will need to utilize Scheduling Poll as a replacement of the FindTime add-in.
When will the new Scheduling Poll feature be available?
Currently, Scheduling Poll is available to all customers worldwide for Outlook on the web and the new Mac Outlook, except for those in GCC High. It is also available to Classic Outlook for Windows users in Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel, and Semi-Annual Enterprise Preview. It will become available to Classic Outlook users on the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel in January 2024, and to the Semi-Annual Extended Channel in June 2024.
What will happen to my current user experience?
When your tenant gets the update, the native feature will be added to their Outlook ribbon replacing FindTime (see more details to access Scheduling Poll https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/access-scheduling-poll-a8742e97-0b59-45c4-9359-23b582c64a27). Users do not need to do anything, this change will happen automatically, and users will be able to keep creating scheduling polls as easily as before.
FindTime Deprecation FAQs
1. What does the deletion of https://findtime.microsoft.com/ mean?
A. This webpage provides information about how to use the FindTime add-in and given that we are replacing it with Scheduling Poll, we are deleting this page. When users try to access this page post 12/12/2022, they will be redirected to the polls dashboard - https://outlook.office.com/findtime/dashboard. The add-in itself should still function as is. It will not be deprecated until Scheduling Poll is released to all supported Outlook apps - in Outlook web, Mac and Win32.
2. What do I need to do to transition from FindTime to Scheduling Poll?
A. 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 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/access-scheduling-poll-a8742e97-0b59-45c4-9359-23b582c64a27). 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.
3. What happens to my existing polls?
A. 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.
Nick Nigro Sullivan910 ph_ly
Yes, this is a known issue, i.e. when a user tries to use FindTime add-in to schedule a poll, they may run into this error/issue. FindTime engineering team is looking into it for resolution. A service incident (EX521435) has been published for impacted tenants, see below for details, if you haven't seen it yet in your M365 Admin center. Workaround is to use Scheduling poll feature in OWA.Update: This issue has been fixed.
EX521435: Exchange Online - Users can't schedule events in the Outlook desktop app using the FindTime add-inImpacted users get an error that states, "Sorry! FindTime could not load due to an unexpected error. Please try again." or "Sorry, we can't load the add-in". While we're working to remediate impact, affected users with access to Outlook on the web can use the Scheduling Poll feature to schedule meetings. See: Scheduling Poll articles - Microsoft Support for more info and share these with your users.
Current status: We're reviewing additional information, including the status of authentication components which facilitate user access to the add-in, conditional access policies related to FindTime add-in subscriptions and collecting additional service logs for further insight into how impact manifests to assist our investigation.
125 Replies
Tried Scheduling poll for the first time and it worked well except that the treatment of daylight saving time is perplexing. As I'm in the UK, I selected the time zone to be "(UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London" even though British Summer Time is an hour ahead of UTC. I only realised that "9:00 AM" on the voting page and "09:00-11:00 in (UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London" in the automatically generated meeting invitation were referring to BST rather than (UTC+00:00) when I saw that the meeting is scheduled as 09:00-11:00 in my calendar.
- Since Microsoft moved from FindTime to Scheduling Poll - I am finding the the "Schedule" button no longer opens up a meeting invite with that time populated. It just opens up a blank meeting invite - but there are no recipients or correct time populated. Is there a way to fix this?
For example, if I reviewed all of my responses and found that 11:00am was the best time - I could click the Schedule button to the right of that row. It would pop open a meeting invite for that time and I could quickly send that out. Clicking that button now just opens a blank meeting invite. Sally_Richardson many thanks for this, it's excellent news. I'm glad to see this coming to Outlook natively.
One question: are there plans to integrate room booking into the Scheduling Poll? The current limitations are:
- when I select the poll participants, I can also add a room (Resource from Exchange Online) as one of the participants, but there seems to be no indication if it is available or not. I have to manually open a separate Outlook Calendar of the room (or rooms) to see if it is available during the proposed times
- if I do manually add a room to the poll, the room does not get calendar holds - meaning there is a danger than between the time I send the poll and the consensus for the timeslot is reached, someone else would book the room I was meaning to use. So I have to manually create and delete room holds.
- AmirHaque-MSFT
Microsoft
No plans at this moment, but this is good feedback/feature request, thank you! When you get a chance, can you please log this on our Microsoft Feedback Portal under Outlook | Calendar @ https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/AmirHaque-MSFT Thank you for the reply.
I am a little confused. This is not a feature request.
it is functionality that already exists. It is a was working for the past year - and is not working correctly now. The schedule button is already there and when I click on it, it doesn’t send a meting invite for the selected time.I just found that if I click to view all of my polls from the Outlook widget, then the functionality works. However, if I click to view my polls with an a browser, then it doesn’t seem to work.
We use Find Time in our organisation. This was working for us a few weeks ago but we are now receiving this error message when using outlook desktop App. Does anyone have any ideas?
I just tried out this feature but it looks like recipients need to log into Outlook/have access to outlook. Is this correct? If so, this seems like an odd design choice for scheduling outside of your organization.
- bonjour, ma messagerie est bloquée car on me dit qu elle est pleine
- Why can’t I see my own calendar when searching for free time. In the past I could at least see my own hours +/-3 hours, so I could see what kind of meetings I have.
The old findtime functions were a lot easier to use and more visible (whole week in choosing specific days) now I have to pick every day by time and need to open my calendar besides to see where my blocks are (if my meeting is important or just a lunch block).
Look 👀 at the old findtime and please bring back the usability 🙏 The scheduling poll is not offering us any schedule availability on Fridays, despite the calendar being mostly clear. Do you know of any correction to this?
- Having issue using the Scheduling poll, after the poll creation, it freeze up outlook and it restarted the outlook applications.
- Anyone having issues with external recipients being able to vote as other recipients/internal people? I have not had that happen in previous version before.
