You Already Pay for Two Meeting Schedulers: Bookings with Me and Scheduling Polls
TL;DR
- Doodle's research puts the average cost of scheduling one meeting over email at 8 to 10 minutes, which compounds to 2 to 3 hours per week for many professionals.
- Bookings with Me gives every Microsoft 365 user a personal booking page that matches visitor availability against their own calendar automatically.
- Bookings with Me covers roughly the same ground as Calendly's free tier, with less setup when your email already runs on Microsoft 365.
- Scheduling Polls is the better Outlook tool when three or more participants need to converge on a time, including external voters.
- Both tools handle time zone differences between participants automatically.
How much does a meeting cost before it even happens? Doodle (opens in new tab), the scheduling software provider, estimated that booking a single meeting over email averages 8 to 10 minutes: the initial request, the replies, the coordination to land on a time everyone can make. The real number varies with the number of participants, their availability, schedule complexity, and how efficiently people communicate, but multiply that 8 to 10 minutes across a normal week of meetings and some professionals lose 2 to 3 hours or more to scheduling email alone.
Most Microsoft 365 tenants already include two tools that claw that time back, and as of May 2023 plenty of organizations have never turned either one on. Here is what each does and when to reach for it.
Bookings with Me: a personal booking page for one-on-ones
Bookings with Me is the Microsoft 365 feature that replaces the availability back-and-forth with a personalized booking page. Clients, colleagues, or customers view your open time slots and book directly against them, with automated email confirmations, reminders, and calendar integration keeping everyone aligned. The result is fewer scheduling conflicts and none of the usual coordination email, all natively inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem where your calendar already lives.
A custom booking page looks like this:
Visitors to the page can automatically match your availability against their own calendar:
You can also add your booking page to your email signature automatically, so the link travels with every message you send:
Setup instructions live in Microsoft's documentation: Bookings with me, setup and sharing (opens in new tab).
How it stacks up against Calendly
There is not much daylight between Bookings with Me and the free tier of Calendly. If Microsoft already handles your email, setup time drops because Bookings integrates natively with your calendar and with Teams for the meetings themselves. Calendly's workflow automation features are the main differentiator, and you could replicate those with Power Automate if you really wanted to.
Scheduling Polls: when three or more calendars collide
Bookings with Me shines for coordinating two people. Once a meeting involves three or more participants, Scheduling Polls in Outlook is the better tool. The organizer proposes multiple candidate times, attendees vote for the options that work, and Outlook aggregates the responses to surface the time that accommodates the most people. No manual schedule cross-referencing, no reply-all chains. Like Bookings with Me, it accounts for time zone differences between participants automatically.
The initial invite that goes out to participants:
External users get to vote on the poll too:
And the organizer receives email notices as votes come in:
Setup details: Create a Scheduling Poll (opens in new tab).
Which one, when
The split is simple: booking page for one-on-ones, poll for groups of three or more. Both ship with licenses most organizations already pay for, so the only real cost is the ten minutes it takes to turn them on, which the first scheduled meeting pays back.
Frequently asked questions
Can external recipients respond to a Scheduling Poll?
Yes. External users can vote on the proposed times, and the organizer receives email notices as votes are placed.
When should you use Scheduling Polls instead of Bookings with Me?
Bookings with Me works best for coordinating between two individuals. Once three or more participants are involved, Scheduling Polls lets everyone vote on proposed times and surfaces the slot that fits the majority.
Saving hours on scheduling? Do the same for security
The same logic applies to tenant security: the manual audit that eats a consultant's day runs in about 60 seconds with CloudCapsule, across 250+ controls per tenant.
See the features
Written by
Nick Ross
CEO · Microsoft MVP · Founder, T-Minus 365
Nick is not just a CEO, he's a respected thought leader and influencer in the MSP space. Tens of thousands of MSPs learn through his YouTube channel, T-Minus365. Nick has been honored as a three-time Microsoft MVP for his educational content; his expertise and influence are the backbone of our mission, ensuring that you are in the best hands when it comes to security.
Nick joined Pax8 in 2017, where he would ultimately oversee product management for PSA and Microsoft integrations. Following his tenure at Pax8, Nick has continued to demonstrate his leadership prowess as an executive at various MSPs, culminating in his most recent role at Sourcepass.
Nick holds a Bachelor's Degree in Business Management from Florida State University, as well as a Minor Degree in Entrepreneurship. In his free time, Nick is an avid hiker, reader, and fitness-junkie.
