Outlook is committed to FindTime and to making group scheduling easier
Published Mar 07 2018 09:00 AM 27.6K Views
Microsoft

Logo.pngWe recently created some confusion with a decision to remove the FindTime add-in from the Office Store. We heard loud and clear from you that you missed FindTime and wanted it back. As a result, we brought it back as quickly as we could. We pride ourselves on being customer-focused so, again, we apologize for the frustration that our decision to remove the FindTime add-in caused.

 

We want customers to know that going forward, we are committed to FindTime and plan to continue investing in making group scheduling easier. We will keep the FindTime add-in up and running, and we will continue to improve it based in large part on customer feedback. In parallel, we will invest to build an even more robust group scheduling solution that is integrated across Outlook.

 

What is FindTime?

If you’re not sure what FindTime is then please read on.

FindTime is an Outlook add-in (Learn more about Outlook add-ins here) and website that uses a polling model to simplify group scheduling. If you have ever tried to find a good time to connect with multiple people who can’t see each other’s availability, you’ll have a sense of the problem that FindTime was built to address.

 

FindTime helps groups converge on the best time to meet. If you are organizing a group meeting that includes people whose availability preferences aren’t clear, FindTime is a great solution. First, it lets you access availability information from the attendees' calendars that you can see to find an initial set of meeting times that work for those attendees. Based on these meeting time proposals, FindTime then sets up a poll on the FindTime website that all attendees can access. Through the website each attendee can suggest new times, can vote on the times that work best for them, can indicate times that do not work, and can see each other’s preferences while voting.  FindTime saves everyone time by helping a group efficiently converge on the best time to meet and facilitates getting the resulting meeting on everyone’s calendars.

 

FT image 1 time options.png

Invitees can vote on their preferred times and see each other’s preferences

 

FindTime was built with busy people in mind – especially those who frequently meet across company boundaries, but FindTime is also a great solution for anyone looking to meet with people whose calendars they don't have access to or for anyone wanting to give multiple meeting time options to someone whose calendar they do have access to.

 

Who can use it?

FindTime currently can only be installed by users with an Office 365 account with a multi-tenant mailbox hosted in Exchange Online and can be accessed with Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 for Windows, Outlook 2016 for Mac, and Outlook on the Web. If your mailbox or account doesn't satisfy these requirements, consider asking your tenant administrator or IT administrator about moving your mailbox to Office 365 with these requirements.

 

How can I get the FindTime add-in?

FindTime is available from the Microsoft Office Store right within Outlook. Please check-out this article to learn more about how to access and use the Office Store. You can also get the FindTime add-in directly from https://findtime.microsoft.com/

 

FT image 2 store image.png

 

 

Thank you for using FindTime and for your valuable feedback

Thank you for your interest in FindTime. We hope you continue to use it and get value from it. If you have any feedback or suggestions you want to share about FindTime or group scheduling, please do – we read all the feedback we get and rely on it to make FindTime and related apps better. The best way to give us feedback about FindTime is through our UserVoice feedback channel which you can find at: https://findtime.uservoice.com.

 

Thanks again,

The Outlook Team

16 Comments
Iron Contributor

Thanks for bringing this back to the store. This is one of the best productivity booster apps for teams. 

Iron Contributor

What is the future of Meeting Poll? It has an estimated release date of Q2 CY2017. Please continue working on this to fully deploy to our tenant. We need a solution that is an integral part of Office 365 and not a seperate app. 

Steel Contributor

Very happy to have this feature continue, now I just need to get our migration to Exchange Online done.

 

-Geoff

Iron Contributor

Hello,

What is the future of FindTime. We had planned to deploy to all our users last September when it was announce that he will be cancel in October.

Since we are waiting a clear vision on it future to not deploy a tool that will be cancelled (again) or replace by a new one few months later.

 

Thanks for clarify the future on this topic.

 

Regards

Microsoft

Hey everyone - 

Thanks for your comments and questions!

 

@Joost Koopmans - FindTime demonstrated to be a better experience for users over Meeting poll so we will be focusing on making those capabilities an integral part of Office 365, with this, Meeting poll will eventually be retired and the roadmap for Meeting poll has been updated to reflect that. 

 

@Vincent VALENTIN - Thanks for your interest in FindTime! I am sorry you had to modify your plans for deployment. We will keep FindTime running until we have a comparable solution in Outlook/Office 365, and when we do, we'll work to make the transition as seamless as we can.

 

I hope this helps, please, let me know if you have other questions.

Thanks!

 

 

Iron Contributor

Good to know @Gabo. Can you please add FindTime to the Office 365 roadmap  so we can track it?

https://products.office.com/en-GB/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=%26freeformsearch=findtime

Brass Contributor

Good to see that this add-in has not been removed. Ditto comments above. Also PLEASE consider how you can make this add-in more interoperable with external/guest users that are not in the same organisation or not on 365. See Doodle.com for a great example. This functionality should really get into #teams and #outlook in terms of creating the poll, but recipients should be open to any email address. Thanks,

Steel Contributor

I use FindTime with non-365 users and it works fine handling them as an un-authenticated guest responding to the poll. What has your experience been?

 

In related news... I was very happy to see this notice in the Admin Center last week: 

 

In Outlook on the web, we’re replacing the “Poll for a time to meet” feature with “FindTime”. Based on your feedback, we will no longer be investing in the “Poll for a time to meet” pilot feature. We are now focusing our development efforts on FindTime and will be working to bring similar functionality to other Outlook clients.

Brass Contributor

Geoffrey, thanks for highlighting this. To be perfectly honest I had forgotten about this functionality having previously used FindTime briefly whilst at MSFT. However, my wife was on the phone to a client of hers this morning and she had a terrible teleconf join experience and they they suggested using Doodle to poll for meetings. I'm pretty sure they are implementing 365 so I wanted to draw their attention to the better conf join experience and then the meeting poll experience. Reading the comments about led me to believe that FindTime only worked with other hosted mailboxes which clearly isn't the case. I'm just testing it now and then I'll pass on the good news - so thanks! As for the .com announcement, I agree it should be the best and identical experience on all device types and screens. 

 

cheers, Malc

Steel Contributor

Initiating the poll does require a cloud mailbox. Some of our users are on prem so that's something we have to manage. But so far I have not encountered any barriers to participating once the poll is created.

 

 

Iron Contributor

 

Don't see message @Geoffrey Bronner on our Tenant.

 

@Gabo can you confirm Geofrey information? Did Fimetime come live again and "Meeting on the poll" canceled? Can I think (again) to deploy FindTime? What is FindTime roadmap?

Thanks to share all information about FindTime future.

Microsoft

Hi Vincent - 

Yes, you should have received MC144910 if you are an Office 365 admin. We are focusing on FindTime as our group scheduling tool and we will be sharing the roadmap soon in the Office roadmap https://products.office.com/en-US/business/office-365-roadmap

 

I am hoping to have news to share soon!

I hope this helps.

 

Gabriel. 

Steel Contributor

It has stopped working with the latest Outlook 2016 update and have no way to "uninstall it."  I installed it from the https://findtime.microsoft.com site but it still doesn't work.  FindTime Error.png

 

Brass Contributor

Once again, Microsoft innovates for only a subset of customers.  Findtime is useless if you spend millions on Microsoft on-prem products/services.  

Copper Contributor

We have recently implemented FindTime however we have a difficult time to find out the User Adoption report as how many users have started using it, how many polls are being created daily/monthly, how many are effectively utilizing it etc. I have done a lot of search however no luck. 

Copper Contributor

My actual free/busy is spread across multiple (4 at present).  Findtime only seems to use the calendar that will hold the meeting's free/busy which is not complete.  How can ? configure findtime to use all 4 calendars for MY availability?  Current feature or future?

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