Scheduling Poll Guide: How It Works, Every Setting, and 12 Real Use Cases
This is the first in a series of deep-dives into the nine poll templates Whocan offers. Each post covers one template end to end — what it does, every setting available, what voters see, and the real situations people use it for.
We start with the Scheduling Poll — Whocan’s second-most-used template (9,604 polls in the last 12 months) and the closest thing the product has to a daily-driver tool. If you’ve ever sent five emails to find a meeting time and given up, this is the template that replaces those emails.
What is a poll type?
A poll type on Whocan is a pre-configured combination of answer formats, default settings, and visual theme that fits one specific situation. All nine templates run on the same underlying engine — they just expose different parts of it. You pick the template that matches your problem, type a title, share the link. The engine handles the rest. For the wider overview, see the parent guide to all nine templates. If the three words template, sample poll and theme sound similar, the glossary post sorts them out.
What a Scheduling Poll does
A Scheduling Poll asks one question: “out of these candidate dates and times, which work for you?”
You — the host — propose several time slots. You share a link. Each participant clicks the slots that work for them, optionally adds a “maybe” answer, and optionally leaves a comment. You can see in real time who has answered, what they picked, and which slot has the broadest agreement.
It’s the digital answer to the email thread “How about Tuesday at 3pm? — Doesn’t work for me, how about Wednesday? — Conflicting meeting, how about Thursday morning?…” — except instead of round-tripping, you put all the candidate slots out at once and let the group converge.
See it live
Below is a real, interactive Whocan scheduling poll embedded in this page. Click a slot to see how voting feels. Nothing you do here changes anything in your own polls — it’s a public sample anyone can interact with.
Every feature, in order
This section is the whole spec — settings on by default, settings you can turn on with one click, and what voters actually see.
What voters do
A scheduling-poll voter sees a list of candidate date/time slots. For each slot they can:
- Click “yes” — they can make this slot.
- Click “maybe” — they can make it work if needed. The host sees these as a separate, weaker signal. This is on by default for scheduling polls (
mayBe: true). - Leave it empty — they can’t make this slot.
- Suggest a new date — if “allow to add options” is on, any voter can append a new candidate slot to the list.
- Leave a private comment — visible only to the host (e.g. “only after 5 pm”).
Voters don’t need an account. They get the poll link, they click, they’re done. The host sees all answers update in real time.
Settings on by default
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
Theme: calendar | A neutral, time-focused visual style. Hosts can switch to any other generic theme, or upload their own background image. |
| Show participants | Every voter sees who else has answered and what they picked. Switch off for an anonymous poll. |
| Maybe / If necessary | Three-way yes / no / maybe answer per slot. Off in most other templates; on here because scheduling is exactly the case where “maybe” matters. |
| Private comments | Each voter can attach a comment visible only to the host — useful for soft constraints like “only after 5pm”. |
| Max participants per slot | The host can cap each slot, useful for “dinner table seats six”. |
| Description per option | Each slot can carry its own description (“on-site at the office”, “video call only”). |
| Allow to add options | Voters can propose new candidate slots themselves. |
Settings you can switch on (advanced)
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Long description | A longer body text under the title — useful when the meeting needs context. |
| Respond till | A deadline after which voting closes. The poll stays visible but locks. |
| Location | A venue field that gets written into the calendar export. |
| Time zone | Full IANA time zones (e.g. America/New_York). Voters in other zones see a “this event is X hours from your time” hint. |
| Form layout | Switch the voting form from list to matrix (Doodle-style table) or back. |
| Theme picker | Generic themes (no-theme, human-hands, duties, calendar) plus full custom: upload your own background image, pick font family, pick color palette, separate desktop/mobile sizing. |
| Get notifications | The host gets an email on every new RSVP. |
| Allow participants notifications | Voters can subscribe to updates (“we’ve picked Thursday at 2pm”). |
| Ask for email / phone number | Require contact information from voters. |
| Copy poll | Duplicate a poll you already ran — useful for recurring meeting cadences. |
| CSV export | Export the full result table once voting closes. |
| iCal / ICS export | Once the winning slot is picked, every voter can add the event to Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. |
Editing slots after you create them
Two host-side tools that quietly save time once you have more than a handful of slots.
Repeat a slot as a series. On any date slot, pick Repeat from the slot menu — the dialog asks for a pattern (daily, weekdays only, weekly, every two weeks, or monthly) and an end date, and generates the rest of the series for you (up to 52 occurrences in one go). Useful for weekly standups, training sessions, rehearsal cycles, or any recurring meeting where you’d otherwise type the same time fifteen times.
Bulk-edit multiple slots at once. Select several slots with the row check boxes (or Select all) and open the multi-edit dialog. For each attribute — date, time, label, description, participant cap — there’s an opt-in check box: tick what you want to change, leave the rest untouched, save once. Shifting every slot by a week, capping all slots at 8 participants, or adding the same description to a batch all become one-save operations.
These two together are why hosts running recurring polls (sports clubs, language schools, board meetings) tend to pick Whocan over tools that force a fresh poll each time.
Managing the results table
Once votes start coming in, the results table is more than a passive list — it’s where the host actually manages the poll. Three host-only tools sit in the table.
Edit any vote in place. Click the pencil icon on any row and the whole row becomes editable — name, every slot answer, comments, email and phone (if those fields are on), and the multi-person counts. Useful when a voter writes back saying “actually I can’t make Tuesday after all” or when someone fills the wrong name and you fix it instead of asking them to redo it.
Tag votes with a flag. Every row has a free-text Tag column visible only to you (the column is hidden from voters). Use it to mark VIPs, confirmed-by-phone, dietary requirements, table assignments, payment status — whatever you need to track alongside the actual answers. Sort the table by the Tag column to group like with like.
Add a vote on someone’s behalf. Below the table there’s an Add vote button — it inserts a new row in edit mode and lets you fill in the answer yourself. The vote is flagged internally as “added on behalf” but counts toward the totals exactly like a self-submitted vote. This is the workflow for “Aunt Erika replied via WhatsApp”, “two people in the office told me at lunch”, or “the babysitter called and confirmed her slot”.
These three together turn the results table from a dashboard into a working surface — most hosts spend more time here than on the create page once a poll is running.
Answer format under the hood
The Scheduling Poll exposes only one option type: date (a date with a check box and an optional maybe answer). That’s deliberate — the template is monomorphic on purpose. If you need a matrix layout (rows of dates, columns of voters) or want to mix date rows with free-text rows in the same poll, the Doodle Poll is the right template instead. For anything more complex — sliders, dropdowns, mixed answer formats — switch to Advanced.
Themes
Visual theming on the Scheduling Poll uses Whocan’s generic-theme system. The picker exposes 32 preset themes — one is scheduling-specific, the rest are general-purpose so you can match the look to whatever you’re scheduling — plus full custom image upload.
The default: calendar. A neutral, time-focused look with calendar-like accents. Pre-configured for the Scheduling Poll — pick this if you want the poll to look like a tool, not an event page.
The minimal choice: no-theme. No background image, no decoration. Useful for internal team scheduling where styling would just be noise.
Bring your own: custom background. Upload your own image and the poll header carries it instead of a preset. About 4% of scheduling polls in the last 12 months use a custom background — usually community events, parent-group polls, or anything where the host wants the page to feel like their event. You can also pick font family, color palette, shadow style, and separate desktop/mobile sizing.
Every preset theme available for the Scheduling Poll, grouped by topic so you can find one that fits:
- Scheduling-focused:
calendar(default) - Neutral / minimal:
no-theme - Food & dining:
table-setting-festive-dinner,grilled-vegetable,pizza,sushi,spaghetti,order-food - Sports & activity:
football-on-grass,american-football,yoga-mat,board-game,concert,movie - Travel & lifestyle:
car-drivers,street,reolocation - Family & kids:
kids,baby-feet-small - Celebrations & events:
wedding-seats,gift,sparkler,valentine-hearts,people-register - Seasonal & holidays:
halloween,christmas,thanksgiving,friendsgiving,easter-eggs,4th-of-july - Work & community:
feedback-from-colleague,volunteer-work
Themes that are reserved for other poll types (human-hands for the Online Poll, potluck for Potluck, duties for Assign Tasks, registration-form for Class Booking) are not in the Scheduling Poll picker. If you want any of those — or any setting Whocan has — switch the poll into Advanced mode and the full library unlocks without losing the votes you already collected.
Twelve real-world use cases
These are not invented examples. They are clusters distilled from the 9,604 real scheduling polls that ran on Whocan in the last 12 months — anonymized by intent. For each one I’ve noted the setting you’d typically tweak from the default.
1. Team meeting / standup sync
By far the largest cluster — over 1,000 polls in the last 12 months had “meeting” or a localized equivalent (“Riunione”, “Réunion”, “Sitzung”, “Reunião”) in the title. Project syncs, weekly team alignments, end-of-quarter retros, sprint planning. The host suggests 3–5 candidate slots, the team picks the one that works.
Typical tweak: turn on time zone for distributed teams, and get notifications so you see the moment your last voter has responded.
2. Board / committee meeting
135 polls in the last 12 months were board, foundation, committee, or governance meetings. The setting is more formal — 8 to 12 people, longer notice period, specific quorum requirements.
Typical tweak: turn on respond till (a hard deadline), long description (the agenda), and location. Use show participants so members can see who has confirmed.
3. Parent group / school event
70 polls a year for parent-teacher evenings, parent-council (“Elternbeirat”) meetings, classroom volunteer slot picking, end-of-year school festivals. The host is usually a parent representative coordinating 15–30 other parents.
Typical tweak: turn on allow to add options so other parents can suggest dates that work for them — half the value is the back-and-forth, not just the final answer.
4. Sports club training / match
81 polls were tennis, golf, soccer, volleyball, or club-sport scheduling. Often recurring — same group, different weeks. The Whocan copy poll feature gets used heavily here: clone last week’s poll, change the dates, send.
Typical tweak: turn on max participants per slot if the venue has a capacity (“max 8 for the indoor court”). Combine with show participants so players see who’s already in.
5. Choir / band / orchestra rehearsals
66 polls a year for chamber-music rehearsals, choir practice, school band sessions, amateur orchestra. The defining feature: rehearsals usually need everyone to attend, not a majority — so the host is looking for the slot with zero “no” answers, not the highest “yes” count.
Typical tweak: keep maybe on but use the comment field heavily — “I can come but need to leave by 8pm” is the kind of nuance that matters for rehearsals.
6. Group trip / weekend / ski weekend
206 polls were trip planning — summer cottages, ski weekends, Eurotrips, family vacations, hiking weekends. These polls often run weeks or months ahead and have wider date ranges (full weekends as a single slot, or even week-long blocks).
Typical tweak: turn on all-day events (no time component) and multi-day events (Friday to Sunday as one slot). Add long description with logistics (“we’ll split the cabin cost 6 ways, arrival from Friday evening”).
7. Friends dinner / brunch / apéro
147 polls were friends-gathering scheduling — group dinners, brunches, monthly drinks, apéro evenings. Smaller groups (often the median: 3 voters), faster turnaround, less formal.
Typical tweak: turn off show participants if you want voters to answer without peer pressure, or leave it on for the “Sara’s already in, count me in too” effect. Use the default calendar theme or switch to a custom background photo of last time you all met.
8. Study group / tutoring / language class
133 polls for study groups, tutoring sessions, language-class scheduling, workshop date-picking. Common in adult-education contexts (“Ripasso per l’esame di italiano”) and in informal study groups.
Typical tweak: turn on respond till so the tutor knows when to commit, and description per option so each slot can carry the topic (“Slot 1: grammar review”, “Slot 2: oral practice”).
9. Photo shoot / portrait session
32 polls were photographers booking time with clients — family portraits, organigram photos for companies, individual headshots in batches. The voters here are clients picking from professional time slots.
Typical tweak: turn on max participants per slot = 1 (one client per slot), and ask for phone number so the photographer can confirm. The result table becomes a booking sheet.
10. Interview round / candidate scheduling
32 polls per year were group-interview scheduling — companies sending a list of candidate slots to interviewees, or universities running batched group interviews. The host doesn’t usually care about consensus here — they care about each individual candidate picking their slot.
Typical tweak: turn on max participants per slot to enforce one interviewer per slot, ask for email, and switch off show participants so candidates don’t see each other.
11. Volunteer rota / shift planning
19 polls per year were volunteer scheduling — association duty rosters, event-day shifts, club setup/teardown rotas. Smaller cluster but the pattern is distinctive: you need all slots covered, not just one winning slot.
Typical tweak: turn on max participants per slot (e.g. “2 people per setup shift”), allow participants notifications so volunteers get reminders, and use description per option to spell out what each shift involves.
12. Family reunion / multi-household gathering
84 polls a year were family scheduling across multiple households — sibling photos, grandparent visits, family weekends, cousin meetups. The challenge: typically 4–8 households with their own constraints (kid school holidays, work schedules, travel time).
Typical tweak: turn on multi-day events so a weekend counts as one slot, long description for logistics, and use the maybe answer heavily — family scheduling lives or dies on flexibility.
How a Scheduling Poll compares
Two close-cousin options come up in searches alongside the Scheduling Poll:
- Doodle Poll — Whocan’s separate poll type for the same time-finding job, presented in matrix layout (rows of dates, columns of voters). Pick it if your group prefers the Doodle visual or wants to mix date rows with free-text rows in the same poll. Its landing page doubles as Whocan’s free Doodle-alternative pitch.
- When2Meet alternative — the same Scheduling Poll, framed as a free replacement for when2meet.com. Use this if you’re coming from when2meet and want a comparable tool with extras like comments, deadlines, and calendar export.
For situations that don’t fit at all — a single event with one date and RSVPs, a task list, a potluck — the parent guide to all nine templates maps each situation to the right template.
What it costs (nothing)
Every setting above is on the free tier. There is no paid plan, no per-poll fee, no per-voter limit. Whocan runs on light advertising on landing pages (not inside the poll itself) and on word of mouth. Over 57,000 polls ran on the engine in the last 12 months without anyone paying for them — the Scheduling Poll alone accounts for about a sixth of that.
Try it yourself
The fastest way to learn what a scheduling poll can do is to make one:
No signup, no email required, no card. If you want to come back to your poll later from a different device, you can save the access link the app gives you — that’s all.
Next in the series: Invitation — Whocan’s most-used template, the one that handles RSVPs for birthdays, weddings, baby showers, and one-off events.