Create a scheduling poll and let everyone vote

A scheduling poll is a way for a group to find a meeting time. You propose several time options, share one link, and everyone votes on the times they can make, so you can see which slot suits the most people.

Create a poll in Decider, tap a few time options on the calendar, and share the link with your group. Everyone votes Yes, Maybe, or No, and you lock the time with the most agreement.

Yes. You can create a scheduling poll, invite as many people as you like, and find a time at no cost, and the people you invite never pay to vote.

No. Anyone with the link can vote without signing up or installing an app. Only the organizer needs a free account to create and manage polls.

Yes. Every proposed time is shown in each participant's own time zone automatically, so remote and international groups always see the correct local time.

Three to five options spread across at least two different days usually works best. Fewer than three and you are effectively asking people to accept one fixed time; more than about eight and response rates drop because the poll starts to feel like work.

A booking link publishes one person's free slots so individuals can book a private 1:1 slot with them. A scheduling poll does the opposite job: it collects opinions from a whole group on a shortlist of candidate times so everyone can attend the same meeting. If several people must be in the same room or call, you want a poll.

A grid asks every participant to paint their whole week, which is accurate but slow and easy to fill in wrong. A poll asks a much smaller question: can you make these specific times, yes, maybe or no. That is a few taps on a phone, which suits a casual group better than painting a week.

That is what the Maybe vote is for. A slot with five Yes votes and two Maybes is usually a better real-world choice than one with four Yes votes and no reservations, and the tally keeps the two counts separate so you can make that judgement rather than having it hidden in one number.

Not in the same poll. Once the link is out, the times stay fixed, so every vote keeps meaning what it meant when it was cast. If the options were wrong, create a new poll and send the new link. If every time passes without a decision, the poll page offers to start a new poll with the same days and times, moved to the coming weeks.

Give it a soft deadline in the message you send, such as votes by Friday lunch, and lock the leading time as soon as you have enough answers to be confident. A stated deadline gives people a reason to answer now rather than later.

Yes. Run the poll once on candidate weekly slots, then use the time you lock as the recurring slot in your own calendar. Polling again is only worth it when the team composition changes.

For a group that needs a time, look for three things: no account for the people you invite, automatic time-zone conversion, and a calendar export at the end. Decider does all three for free, which is why it tends to beat both the older grid tools and the ad-supported polls for casual groups.

There is no practical limit, and the tally stays readable as the group grows because you are reading vote counts rather than interpreting shaded regions. Polls of forty or fifty people work fine; above that, expect to lock a time before everyone has answered.

The poll lists everyone who has voted, by name, so you can see who is missing. Once someone has answered, the organizer can copy a ready-made reminder for the group chat that names who has voted so far, so the rest know the nudge is meant for them.

Yes, automatically. Each participant's browser zone is detected and every proposed slot is converted, so a 15:00 Stockholm option reads as 09:00 to someone in New York without anyone doing the arithmetic.

Yes, and that is the main reason groups use a poll. A poll asks people which of your proposed times they can make, so no one connects a calendar or exposes what else is in their week.

Everyone invited can see the tally, which is what makes the result feel fair and stops a second round of debate. If you need a private collection instead, ask people to reply to you directly and enter the answers yourself.

You lock that slot, everyone sees the confirmed time on the same link, and each person can add it to Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. If you let Decider create a Jitsi video link when you lock the time, it travels with the invite.

For anything above three people, yes. A chat thread makes each person read every previous reply before answering, so the effort grows with the group. A poll asks each person the same small question independently, and produces a countable answer instead of a conversation you have to summarise.