You can use the Voting Buttons to get responses from a group of colleagues to see what the majority of them are leaning towards. This comes in handy when getting feedback for a meeting date and location or for figuring out where everyone is going to meet after work. Outlook tallies the votes for you so that they can easily be assessed.
To Insert Voting Buttons into your Message:
1. Create your New Message.
2. Select the Options tab.
3. Select Use Voting Buttons.
4. Choose the voting buttons you wish to use from the four options provided (Approve; Reject, Yes; No, Yes; No; Maybe, or Custom).
5. Make sure your message is the way you want it, including the question or statement that is to be voted on. Make sure you have included the proper recipients for the email message.
6. Click Send.
The recipients of your message will notice a highlighted line of text (vote by clicking Vote in the Respond group above) showing up above the From line in the email. By clicking Vote, they will be shown the voting options to select from. After they select the desired voting option, a confirmation prompt will appear showing their selection and giving them the choice of sending the response or editing the response before sending.
Getting a Tally of the Votes:
You will receive the replies to your message with the selected voting option in the subject line. You could tally the votes yourself, however if you sent the message out to a large number of recipients, this could be rather time consuming. A better method is to let Outlook tally the votes for you.
1. Go to your Sent Items.
2. Open the message that had the voting buttons.
3. Go to the Ribbon.
4. In the Show section, select Tracking.
You will see the reply totals followed by a list of the individual votes.
