How FINDaTIME works

FINDaTIME is a free scheduling poll. One person proposes a few time slots, everyone else ranks them, and the poll shows which slot works best for the group. This page walks through the whole process and spells out the rules the poll follows.

Two roles, one account

Every poll has an organiser and a set of participants. The organiser is the person who creates the poll and is the only one who signs in. Participants never create an account: each receives a private link by email and votes through it. If you have ever been asked to install an app just to say when you are free, this is the opposite of that.

The organiser can also vote. Your own ballot is on the dashboard, next to the poll, so you rank the slots the same way everyone else does and your answers count in the results.

Signing in uses your Google account and gives FINDaTIME only your name, email address and account identifier. It grants no access to your calendar, your mail or anything else. Calendar access is a separate, optional step that you take only when you ask for a calendar feature, and it is described below.

Step 2: propose time slots

On the New poll page you give the poll a title, an optional description, a meeting length (15, 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes) and the time zone the poll is set in. The time zone defaults to the one your browser reports. You then pick a date range and the hours you are generally available on each weekday, and FINDaTIME lays out the candidate slots for you to tick.

If you connect Google Calendar, FINDaTIME can shade the slots that clash with your existing commitments. It asks Google only for your free/busy information for the dates you selected (a window of up to 62 days), so it sees that you are busy from 10:00 to 11:00, never what the meeting is, who is in it or where it is. Nothing from this check is stored; it is shown on screen while you create the poll and then discarded.

You also choose where the meeting will happen: a Google Meet link created automatically when you book, a physical address, a link to another video service, or a phone call. A poll holds at most 60 time slots.

Step 3: invite people by email

Add each participant's name and email address. The same address entered twice, in any capitalisation, counts once. A poll holds at most 50 participants, and you can add more people later as long as the poll is still open.

FINDaTIME emails each person a message containing their own private voting link. You can edit the subject and body before it goes out; each recipient gets their own greeting and link. To keep the sender honest, one organiser may send at most 20 invitation emails per day (counted on a UTC calendar day), and the same person cannot be emailed again within 10 minutes of the last message. If you would rather not use email at all, each link can be copied from the dashboard and sent any way you like, though a link is personal to one voter and should not be pasted to a group.

Step 4: ranked voting

A voting link opens the poll with the times shown in the poll's time zone. A voter who lives somewhere else can switch the display to their own zone with one control, and the slots are converted on the spot. For each slot the voter picks one of five answers: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, Also ok or Unavailable. The rules are simple and the server enforces them:

Each voter gives at most one 1st choice, one 2nd choice and one 3rd choice. Choosing a rank for a new slot moves it off the slot that had it before.
Also ok means "I can make it, it is just not one of my top three". It can be marked on any number of slots, and giving that slot a rank later replaces it.
Unavailable can be marked on any number of slots. A slot is one or the other: Also ok and Unavailable cannot both be on it.
A slot left blank means "no answer": it counts as neither available nor unavailable for that voter.
A ballot must contain at least one answer before it can be sent.

Votes are not locked in. A voter can reopen the same link at any time while the poll is open, see the answers they gave, change them and submit again; the new ballot replaces the old one completely. Voters see the poll, their own answers and the running counts for each slot. They do not see other participants' names, email addresses or links.

Step 5: results and the recommendation

The organiser's results page scores every slot as the votes arrive. A 1st choice is worth three points, a 2nd choice two, a 3rd choice one and Also ok one; Unavailable scores nothing. Every answer except Unavailable counts the voter as available for that slot. Slots are ordered by four rules in turn: fewest people unavailable, then highest score, then most people available, then the earliest start time as a tiebreak.

That order matters. A slot that somebody cannot make ranks below every slot that everybody can make, no matter how many first choices it collected, but it is never thrown out of the list. If the only slot everyone can attend is the one most people ranked third, it still wins, and the page shows you why. When nobody has said they can make the top-ranked slot, for example before any votes are in, no recommendation is shown at all rather than a misleading one. The full table can be downloaded as a CSV file.

Step 6: book the winning slot

When you are ready, pick a slot (the recommended one or any other) and ask FINDaTIME to schedule it. The first time, Google will ask you to allow FINDaTIME to create and manage events it owns on your calendar. FINDaTIME then creates one event for that slot on your primary calendar, adds a Google Meet link if that is the location you chose, and invites every participant of the poll, so Google sends each of them a calendar invitation with the details.

Everyone on the poll is invited, including people who marked the chosen slot unavailable and people who never voted. The invitation is how they learn the decision, and they can decline it in their calendar as usual. As with any calendar event, the attendees can see each other's email addresses on it. Booking the slot closes the poll.

Deadlines

A poll can carry a voting deadline, set as a date and time in the poll's time zone when you create it or changed later from the dashboard. Voters see a countdown on the voting page and the deadline is quoted in the invitation email. When the deadline arrives the poll closes on its own: late ballots are refused the moment the time passes, and the organiser receives an email with the outcome, including how many people answered and which slot came top.

Closing a poll

A poll closes in one of two ways: you book a slot, or its voting deadline passes. A closed poll refuses new votes and changes to existing ones, and its deadline and location can no longer be edited. There is no separate "close" button; if you want a poll to stop accepting votes at a particular moment, give it a deadline. A poll you no longer need can be deleted from the dashboard, which permanently removes its slots, participants and votes.

The limits at a glance

60 time slots and 50 participants per poll.
Meeting lengths of 15, 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes.
Calendar free/busy checks cover a window of up to 62 days.
20 invitation emails per organiser per day; 10 minutes between emails to the same person.
One 1st, one 2nd and one 3rd choice per voter; unlimited Also ok and Unavailable marks.

Where next

The FAQ answers the questions people ask most, and the guides cover meetings across time zones, why ranked voting beats a yes/no grid, and how to run a standing group. The Privacy Statement describes exactly what is stored and for how long.

Ready to try it? Create a poll.