Outlook: Check Meeting Availability with Scheduling Assistant

To quickly determine people’s availability in Outlook during normal work hours, you can use Scheduling Assistant and Scheduling Poll (FindTime)*.

Internal UT or UT System Meetings

Best when all participants are UT employees/students/residents with an active NetID at one of the six campuses in the UT  system.             

Scheduling Assistant (Windows)

The Scheduling Assistant (SA) helps you find the best time for a meeting by showing participants' free/busy times during a typical work week. You can manually use the SA to find a meeting time or use the Auto-pick functionality.

1. Click the Calendar icon on the right-hand menu.
2. Click New Meeting or New Appointment in the Calendar view.
2. In the meeting window, enter the attendees' email addresses.
   • Decide who is ‘Required’ and who is ‘Optional’
     1. Add the correct people to the appropriate line.
     2. You can enter the NetID if you know it, and it will automatically resolve to a name.
     3. You can also start typing the person's name, and it will suggest matches) in the To field.
     4. Another method is to use the ‘Address Book’ or ‘Check names’ Function in the top menu.
     5. Both are tracked under the ‘Tracking’ header in the top-level menu.
     6. The meeting will still proceed as scheduled even if no one replies or
     7. The scheduler is responsible for keeping track and making decisions about whether the appropriate personnel are attending.
3. Open Scheduling Assistant:
   • Click the "Scheduling Assistant" tab in the ribbon.
   • You’ll see a timeline showing when each participant is free, busy, tentative, or out of office. (To see the full legend of statuses, look at the bottom right of the meeting page)
4. Choose an Available Time Slot:
   • Look for a time when all required attendees are free.
     1. You can manually scroll through the calendar days and weeks, searching for an open time.
        1. Free Times are generally ‘white’ with no coloring or hashing (see bottom of Meeting Invite screen to see all of the statuses available)
        2. Once you see a free time for all ‘Required’ participants, click on the time you want to start the meeting.
           1. Outlook will set the meeting time at ½ hour by default.
           2. To expand or extend the time/length of the meeting you can drag the left-most border to the time you wish to end the meeting – OR
           3. You can use the manual entry fields above the calendar and set the time yourself.
     2. You can use the ‘Auto-Pick’ function at the top of the page on the ribbon menu
        1. This allows you to select between several options of who/whom to include in the ‘auto-pick’ search
           1. Auto-pick will advance the meeting time to the first available time for the participants and resources you chose in the ‘auto-pick’ menu
           2. You can continue advancing the suggested times by clicking ‘Auto-Pick’ until you find a comfortable time.
     3. Adjust the meeting time accordingly until you reach a consensus time to suggest in your invite.
5. Finalize and Send Invitation:
   • Click "Meeting" to return to the invitation.
   • Add meeting details and location (or Teams/Zoom link).
   • You can also add ‘Resources’ (i.e. Rooms) to the invite as well to inform participants where the meeting is being held in the case of ‘in-person’ meetings
   • Click "Send" to finalize.

External or Large Groups

Your meeting may require external participants from outside the UT system, like vendors, consultants, business contacts, etc. You have an inordinately large audience that would make using the SA or the Auto-Pick functionality less effective. You collaborate with people that have disparate email addresses.

If you’re scheduling with people outside your organization or a large group, FindTime (Scheduling Poll) helps by letting attendees vote on preferred times.

If you’re scheduling with people outside your organization or a large group, FindTime (Scheduling Poll) helps by letting attendees vote on preferred times.

Steps to Use FindTime Scheduling Poll:

1. Open Outlook and Start a New Email:
   • Compose a new email to the attendees.
   • Enter all contacts (if they are in your contacts list) or email addresses of all persons needed at the meeting.
2. Insert a Scheduling Poll:
   • Click on "New Meeting Poll" in the ribbon (available in Outlook on Web, Desktop, or FindTime*).

3. Select Meeting Options:
   • Choose multiple time slots that work for you.
     1. You can choose the date and time to seed the process
     2. All internal attendees will show their schedules availability during specific times
     3. You can choose the options to identify your proposed times (See image below narrative):

• We recommend leaving the ‘Meeting Hours’ turned on (Orange Arrow) to display only working hours (CST)
• Select the date you are targeting (Green Arrow)
• You can move forward and back in time using the <> (Blue Arrow)
• As you select the numbers in the display will change to show who is available GREEN indicates ‘available’; PURPLE indicates ‘tentative’; RED indicates ‘unavailable’  [Note: People outside the UT system will always show RED This is the strength of the poll, you can ID a time for your team here and use that to suggest times for a meeting for external participants.]
• Select a single or multiple times to poll on (BLACK Arrows)
• Select ‘Next’ at the bottom of the side-bar window. [Note: 'Next’ will not be selectable until you select at least one time in the above steps.]

         4.The next screen allows you to check your times and polling

                    5. If you’re happy with the settings click ‘Create Poll’

                     6. Your email should now look like this:

7. SEND  the email to the invitees.
   1. All invitees will have the option to vote on the time that works best for them
   2. All responding invitees will show up in your INBOX with their vote
   3. You can review the results in the email by using the ‘VIEW POLL’ box in the reply email. The system will continuously calculate the results as they come in.
8. You can schedule the meeting directly from the poll by using the ‘Schedule Meeting’ button.
9. Meetings scheduled like this will automatically reserve the time for internal Outlook users, and send an invite to external users.