Collaboration Tools

Scheduling App Adds Way to Vote on Meeting Times

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 12/07/21

Calendly, which produces a scheduling application, has added a new component that simplifies the process of finding a time that works best for groups of participants. "Meeting Polls" enables users to poll and vote on preferred meeting times. The feature, which is being beta-tested, works when there are at least three people who need to be part of the scheduling.

According to the company, in an education setting, where Calendly is popular, Meeting Polls would make the job of setting days and times for hosting faculty meetings or group projects easier and would allow people who are scheduling meetings for others, such as administrative assistants, to streamline their work. Institutional customers for Calendly include Stanford University, Dartmouth College and the University of Texas at Austin.

One faculty member who has tested the beta said the functionality has been valuable.

"Coordinating meetings with students and stakeholders across educational institutions, departments and nonprofits can be quite time-consuming when you're managing multiple time zones and each individual's availability," said Maria Wallace, an assistant professor for the Center for STEM Education at the University of Southern Mississippi, in a testimonial. "Now I can solve this challenge in one central platform without the back-and-forth e-mails. Meeting Polls is essential for making short and long-term partnership collaboration easy and efficient — a must in education."

"Hybrid work and everything that it touches is being refined and reinvented these days, so it's only natural we sought out a new way to provide two-way insight into meeting availability preferences in the most efficient way possible," added Tope Awotona, founder and CEO of Calendly. "Meeting Polls simplifies cross-organizational collaboration, productivity and scheduling as more workers look to protect their time and apply it meaningfully from wherever they call the office."

Currently, users have unlimited access to Meeting Polls from any Calendly plan, including the basic one. The company noted that further enhancements would be added to Meeting Polls by mid-2022.