Voting function in Outlook 2007

Triggered by a post that Alan Lepofsky did 2 days ago on voting or polling via email :

… I’ve been asked several times by customers, “Can I send a poll via email in Lotus Notes and have the recipients reply with their vote”. Well the answer is, not “out of the box”, but due to the flexibility and power of Notes, of course you can set this up in just a few minutes! This tip explains how to create a button in an email message which when pressed, prompts the reader to enter their vote, and automatically sends the response back to the address you define. …

My post is not intended to start a lenghty discussion back and forth on functions and features, but rather to let people see that Outlook 2007 (and earlier versions that also include this function) has many features and a lot of which we just take for granted …

(click the pictures to enlarge them)

1. In Outlook type your email and go to Options … Use Voting Buttons …

2. Outlook 2007 has a number of standard Votes like Aprove; Reject and Yes;No

3. You can also Customise your Votes

4. Then you can send out your email to the adressees. The Adressees can respond to you email with using the Vote button in the upperleft corner of the screen.

5. Select the Vote of your choice.

6. You can send your Vote directly or add more info for clarification

7. The person who has initiated the Voting process has an email with a specific icon in the Sent Mail folder (in this case also me)

8 When clicking the this email, it shows a Tracking button which takes you to the Tracking screen of the email

9. The tracking screen provides an overview of all Voter and their Votes, and the date and time they voted