Overview
If you're trying to schedule a meeting with multiple people, you can send a poll to let them vote on preferred meeting times. In this guide, we compare approved tools designed for this purpose, and link to survey tools that can also be used for this purpose.
Tools for polling meeting availability
Outlook's Scheduling Poll add-in and Zoom Scheduler's availability poll feature are both designed specifically for polling meeting times. Both offer convenient features such as calendar integration and the ability to quickly create a calendar event based on poll results.
Scheduling Poll in Outlook is best if...
- The meeting will be held in-person
- You want to check people's calendar availability before selecting date/time options
Availability poll in Zoom Scheduler is best if...
- You want to auto-generate a Zoom meeting link once the date/time is decided
- Most people you're polling do not have USC Outlook accounts
Features
Scheduling Poll in Outlook
Availability poll in Zoom Scheduler
Availability
- Available for anyone with a USC Outlook account (faculty, staff, and affiliates)
- Can be sent to any recipients, including students: no Outlook or USC account needed
- Available for all USC faculty and staff
- Can be sent to any recipients, including students: no Zoom or USC account needed
Outlook calendar integration
- Automatically integrates with your Outlook calendar
- Automatically checks the calendars of recipients who have a USC Outlook account
- Automatically integrates with your Outlook calendar
- Cannot check the calendars of recipients
Poll format
- Poll is generated within an Outlook email as a link to a webpage
- You can also share the link by adding attendees on the poll's webpage
- Recipients cannot view poll anonymously
- Poll is generated as a link to a webpage
- No sending option within Zoom: you must share the link via email or another application such as Slack
- Recipients can view poll anonymously (but still need to provide their contact information to answer)
Ability to create meeting from poll results?
- Outlook calendar event: Yes
- Zoom meeting link: No, you must manually add it to the Outlook calendar event
- Outlook calendar event: Yes
- Zoom meeting link: Yes
How-to guides
Using Scheduling Poll in Outlook
Using Zoom Scheduler to create availability polls
Related survey tools
The following tools, while not designed for meeting time polls, can be adapted to create a poll:
Features
Microsoft Poll
Microsoft Forms
Google Forms
Availability
- Can be created by faculty, staff, and affiliates
- Can be sent to any recipients
- Can be created by faculty, staff, affiliates, and students
- Can be sent to any recipients
- Can be created by faculty, staff, and students
- Can be sent to any recipients
Features
- Add-in available in Outlook and powered by Microsoft Forms
- Limited to one brief question with multiple choice answers
- No calendar integration or ability to create event based on poll results
- Multiple questions and answer formats available
- No calendar integration or ability to create event based on poll results
- Multiple questions and answer formats available
- No calendar integration or ability to create event based on poll results
Poll format
- Poll is generated within an Outlook email
- Poll is embedded if viewed in Outlook on the web, but linked if viewed in Outlook for Windows or PC
Poll is generated as a link to a webpage
Poll is generated as a link to a webpage
How-to guides
Using Polls in Outlook
Creating a survey in Microsoft Forms
Creating a survey in Google Forms