Calendly: How To Create a Meeting Poll

Dominic Anderson March 14, 2024

Scheduling meetings in today’s hectic business environment can be tricky. Fortunately, auto-scheduling platforms like Calendly can solve this problem. Moreover, users can use the Calendly Meeting Poll to schedule group meetings without hassle. That way, you can arrange to meet people who are just as busy as you.

This article will explain everything you need to know about Calendly meeting polls and how to set them up.

What is a Meeting Poll?

The Calendly meeting poll is a new feature to reduce the stress of finding a common time when scheduling a group meeting. Meeting polls help you handle the usual time-consuming and stressful effort of arranging a convenient meeting time for all participants.

Perhaps the best part about this feature is that it is free for all Calendly users, no matter your plan. Importantly, participants don’t need a Calendly account to access or join the meeting.

It works by setting up a meeting poll link with available times for the invitees to vote on. These times can be viewed in each invitee’s local time zone. Each person picks the best time for them, and the host can then select the best available time for all based on the poll result.

You can create a poll within the platform or via Calendly’s Gmail, Chrome, and Firefox extensions.

How to Set up Calendly Meeting Poll

Follow the steps below to set up a poll within the Calendly Create menu.

Step 1: Select Available Times

Log in to your Home Page in Calendly.
Click on + Create and select Meeting Poll.
Under Time Zone, choose the time zone you’d like to use. The invitees will see the time in their respective time zones.
Set the duration of your meeting under Duration.
If you use a company account and want to add additional hosts within your organization, do that under Host.
Choose your Calendly schedule to view your available times. Your unavailable times from your schedule will be greyed out on the displayed calendar.
Hover over the calendar to select the times for invitees to vote on. You can offer up to 40 times, including times that overlap. You can also remove a time you selected by tapping the X beside that particular slot or clicking Clear All to remove all selected times.
If you’re satisfied with all selected times, press Next.

Step 2: Add Meeting Details

Under Meeting Details, enter the Meeting name, and set the Invitee language and Meeting location.
Click on Add details/agenda if you’d like to add details.
Under Settings, choose Vote visibility if you want participants to see each other’s names and votes. You can also choose to reserve the selected times if you want Calendly to place temporary placeholders on your calendar for all your chosen times until one is booked.
Select Publish meeting poll to publish the poll.

You can still edit the poll after publishing.

Go to Scheduled Events on your Home Page.
Click on Pending.
Find the event you want to edit. Select Details.
Click Edit Poll.

The platform will automatically generate a link for you. But if you want to edit it, select the text in the box and input your preferred text.
Click on Preview this poll if you’d like to see how the poll will appear to invitees.
If you’re satisfied, select Copy Link.
Paste the link in a message and send it to participants.

Step 4: Schedule the Best time

After participants have voted for their preferred time, you can choose the best available slot based on the result.

On your Home Page, go to Scheduled Events.
Click on Pending.
Find the event you want to edit. Select Details.
Find the preferred time and select Book meeting time.
Confirm the accuracy of the invitee list, and then choose Book meeting.

When you book, you and your invitees will receive a calendar invitation with the meeting details and location.

How to Set up Calendly Meeting Poll From Chrome or Firefox

You can set up a meeting poll directly from Chrome or Firefox by installing the Calendly extension.

Once installed, open the extension from your browser toolbar.
Click on Create at the top of the extension page.
Select Meeting Poll.
A new browser tab will open automatically to your Calendly account to set up your poll.
Use the information above to set up your meeting poll.

How to Set up Calendly Meeting Poll from Gmail

You can also set up a poll directly from your Gmail inbox.

Open your Calendly Chrome extension and enable the Gmail integration. This will automatically display a Calendly icon in your Gmail menu.
Click the icon and select the Meeting Poll option.
This will automatically open your Calendly account in a new tab.
Follow the instructions above to create a meeting poll.

Group Meetings Made Easy

Calendly Meeting Poll has made scheduling group meetings quick and easy. If you’ve ever had problems coordinating get-togethers with colleagues or clients, your prayers have been answered. You can arrange to meet at a mutually convenient time and date with a quick click or a tap. This way, you never have to miss another meeting.

Next, you might want to learn what to do if Calendly isn’t showing your availability.

FAQs

Who can create a meeting poll?

The meeting poll feature is available to all plans. Therefore, anyone with a Calendly account can set up a meeting poll.

Who can vote on the Calendly meeting poll?

Anyone with the poll can vote on the meeting poll, whether they have a Calendly account or not.

Does the Calendly meeting poll work for participants across different time zones?

With Calendly’s time zone detection tool, Calendly will detect the time zone of every invitee through their browser or device to display the times in their time zone.

Is there a maximum number of voters on the meeting poll?

You can invite 40 participants through the meeting poll.