[Upbeat music] How can you stop wasting time?
Trying to find the best time for a meeting?
The answer might be Microsoft FindTime an Outlook add-in for scheduling
meetings. Hi, I'm Dawn Bjork,
The Software Pro I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Certified Virtual
Presenter. In this training, we'll look at how to save time by using FindTime.
Think about the last time you tried to find a time for a meeting.
If everyone involved in the meeting, as part of the same organization,
you can use Outlook Scheduling Assistant to show your availability of each
person you want to invite to a meeting. However,
the process is more complicated when you're trying to set up a meeting with a
lot of people, with people who have busy calendars,
or maybe people who work outside of your organization and you can't even see
their calendars, it can be time consuming and complicated. Too often,
this means that there are long email threads going back and forth.
People will throw in different times that work for them.
And then you waste a lot of time trying to find a place in your schedules that
sticks for everyone. Or you could try a third-party application like Doodle,
but that doesn't integrate well with your Outlook calendar.
The FindTime add-in is designed to solve this scheduling challenge.
Here's how it works. If you're a meeting organizer,
with FindTime you propose a few initial times.
Those times are held on your calendar and then people vote on the
times that work for them. Now, if none of the proposed times work,
the attendees can suggest additional times to vote on for the meeting.
Once a time has found that works for everyone.
FindTime schedules the meeting on your calendar saving you lots of time.
First, how do you get started with the FindTime add-in?
It's good to know that FindTime is supported by education and business Microsoft
365 accounts. If you have a free or paid consumer account,
you won't be able to use FindTime, but what about the recipients?
They don't need to have FindTime installed.
So your invitation can be sent to people who don't use Office 365.
Only the organizers need to be on Office 365.
As long as your organization supports add-ins,
there are two ways to install FindTime.
One is by going to FindTime.Microsoft.com
or from Outlook you can find this add-in in the Microsoft
store. Let's look at these options.
The first way to install FindTime is to simply head to FindTime.Microsoft.com
and here you'll see the option to Install for free. However,
you'll probably find it easier to install directly from Outlook from the Home
tab of your Inbox. Simply move to Get Add-ins
and then search for FindTime. From here choose to add.
I'll close and now FindTime appears on my ribbon.
Once you have FindTime,
there are two different ways you can schedule a meeting in Outlook.
One is by replying to an email. And the second is by starting a new email.
In this case,
I have an email about scheduling a time to meet about an upcoming training
class. And there are three other people involved in the conversation from here.
I'll choose Reply with Meeting Poll.
The other option would be to reply to the message first. So I'll Reply All.
And then from the Message ribbon tab, here is New Meeting Poll.
The end result will be the same. In this case, I'll Reply with Meeting Poll.
And let's explore these options. First, choose the duration for the meeting.
Right now, it's 30 minutes. We can make that an hour.
I'll choose 45 minutes. Will this meeting be during your work hours?
When this option is checked,
this limits the suggested meeting times to work days and only those hours or
that timeframe that you have specified with your calendar
preferences. You can change this under File > Options. By default,
the timeframe is 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Also change the time zone if necessary.
FindTime will look for the attendees schedules if they're available and suggest
suitable meeting times. In this case,
everyone else is outside of the organization, and so,
we only see one attendee here in green.
If you had multiple people in your organization,
then you would see them is either green or red.
And that would give you a little bit more information.
And so for internal meetings, this can be really helpful. Right now,
our time options are shown chronologically. Choosing this availability option,
which shows you the availability for those attendees,
where we have access to their calendars.
So let's say I'd like to propose 9:00 AM on Monday.
One of the things that can be helpful when you're looking through these choices
is to go to the calendar.
That way you can see if you have any other conflicts or perhaps there's a
meeting that comes in beforehand and sometimes they might run over.
And that way you can confirm that this is actually a good time.
I'll also pick another time in this same day and we can go
to other days in the week. So for Tuesday, this is available,
but I don't want to schedule anything else than until maybe
three o'clock.
You can see that there are other times when I'm not available during that day.
You can select up to a maximum of 20 times.
And let's add one more to the list. When you're done, choose Next.
You can enter a location. This might be virtual,
and you may see options either for an online meeting,
Skype meeting or Teams.
This will depend upon what the default online meeting channel is that is set up
by your organization. Now,
if you're using a third party online meeting provider, such as Zoom or WebEx,
you can still schedule a meeting through FindTime,
but you can't use the automatic schedule option.
It would just be something that you would need to schedule once you get the poll
results and the timeframe has been committed for the attendees.
You'll also see poll settings that you can change.
Do you want to be notified about poll updates,
automatic scheduling when there's consensus,
and holding those selected times on your calendar.
Let's choose the option then to add this response or those poll
to the email. This is what the attendees or the participants will see,
and they'll have the ability then to select options for this meeting.
I'll send this to start the voting process.
One of the poll options was to hold selected times on your calendar.
All of the holds will be removed when a poll is scheduled or canceled,
but this is really helpful if you're juggling a busy calendar and you want to
avoid conflicts or double booking.
And this is what the message looks like from the recipient side,
essentially just what you sent it.
Notice how the poll is pulling from her calendar to show busy and available
times. And let's just say, for instance, that this one works,
but I prefer a little bit later in the morning. And so,
that is still a yes vote, but you're giving preference to that.
And this would also work,
but because I'm busy these other times would not work.
And we'd also have the option here to propose another time,
but let's see how well this works with the other attendees.
So I'll submit my vote. If this was part of your settings,
you would then also get a message to tell you that Megan has voted.
You can also view the updates by simply moving to one of these held dates and
opening it up double-clicking. From here, pick See status or update times.
And this is the view that other attendees would also have. So what if I'm Allan,
you can simply click directly on that email and we can see if
other people have voted and then what their selections are. So from here,
Allan is the last one to vote and that often will skew his
preferences. So we can say yes here.
And if everyone is choosing these other times and
I have availability, I might also then come in with a prefer.
FindTime will either pick the first preferred choice
if none of those are specified,
then it would be the first available for everyone.
And that will automatically be scheduled.
So I'll finish up these and go ahead and vote. Let's look at your inbox.
If it was part of your settings, when someone votes you'll see the results,
and this will give us an idea of where we're going with this poll.
So we can see the heart is the preferred or favorited option.
If all attendees are timely about voting,
then the next thing that happens is that a meeting is scheduled during the
preferred or first available time. And then you can, of course,
review the voting. If not all the attendees have voted,
but this might be a time sensitive meeting,
you actually can go ahead and schedule a meeting based upon the best
preferences that have been specified so far. So that's another option.
Here is our new meeting.
Depending upon how we're planning to meet and what my meeting options are,
then I can send out a meeting invitation, let's say for a Teams meeting,
for this selected timeframe.
And that is how you can leverage FindTime to make it much faster and
easier for you to schedule meetings.
Now you've seen how to save time and effort in Microsoft Outlook by using the
FindTime add-in.
For more tips on being productive with Outlook or to sign up for my tips
newsletter, visit TheSoftwarePro.com/Outlook.
If this training was helpful,
please like this video and subscribe to this channel. This is Dawn Bjork,
The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.
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