How to use Tasks in Microsoft Teams (To Do + Planner)

Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show  you the brand-new Tasks in Microsoft Teams. You might be thinking, doesn't Microsoft already  have a whole bunch of task tracking apps? And yes, there's Microsoft To Do to track your  individual tasks and there's Microsoft Planner, which you could use to track team or group  tasks. With Tasks in Microsoft Teams, those two are now coming together so you could  both see your individual tasks and all of your group tasks in one place. Now in the past, w

hen  maybe you used group tasks, you might've had a task assigned to you and you couldn't see that on  your own individual task list. By bringing the two together, you can now see everything that you're  responsible for all in one place. I'm going to show you step-by-step how you can take advantage  of it and first off, I'm going to show you how you can get it. All right, let's jump on the PC and  let's get started. Here I am in Microsoft Teams and first off, how do we get to the new tasks  expe

rience? To get there, let's go over to the left-hand rail and click on the ellipses. This  opens up all of the different add-on experiences in Microsoft Teams. Now to launch the tasks  experience, we need to type in Planner. Yes, I know that sounds a little weird. Why would we  type in Planner when we're looking for Tasks? Microsoft is currently going through the process  of renaming the app. In a few months, it'll show up as Tasks but for now, it's currently still  under the name Planner. So, d

epending on when you're watching this video, if you're watching it  now or within a few weeks of when it's published, search for Planner. If you're watching it maybe in  a few months, try searching for Tasks. Either way, the experience will be the same. In fact, here up  on top, you see some messaging on the name change that's currently occurring. Now that we're  in the Tasks app, if this is something that you think you might use frequently, you could  pin the app to your left handrail and in fa

ct, you could do this for any of the icons  on the left hand side. Simply right click on the icon and then you could go to pin, and this  will stay up within the left rail. For instance, here I click on Teams, and you'll see that I still  have access to the new Microsoft Tasks experience. Back now in Microsoft Tasks, first off, I want  to orient you to what you can do within Microsoft Tasks. Over on the left-hand side, we have two  different groups. One of the groups is called My Tasks and every

thing that shows up  within this category is for me to do. These are my own individual tasks. Beneath that, I  have shared plans. You could think of this as team tasks or group tasks. First off, we're going to  start with My Tasks to see how we can use this. Over on the right-hand side, I have what  looks like a fairly typical task list. Let's go in and type in our very first task. For  those of you who have seen my channel before, you realize that I'm opening my own cookie company  so I want to

add some tasks related to making sure I could launch this company successfully.  My first task is tweak the cookie recipe. Now over on the right of this task, I can set  a priority on this task. If I click on this, I could set it to either medium or to important.  Now this seems like a pretty important task so I'm going to select important. To the right of that, I  can also set the due date. If I click on this icon and click on it again, this opens up a calendar  and I should probably be able t

o get this done by Friday so I'm going to select Friday the 16th. Now  that I finished entering my task, I can click on this check mark and this is now added to my task  list. Now that I've added the task to my list, I can double click on the task, and I could  enter in some additional details. Here again, I could set the title of the task, I could set  the priority, the due date and I could type in some notes. Let me add a note to this task. I have  a hunch that adding more sugar to cookies wil

l get people to purchase them more frequently but as  any good business owner, I need to experiment. Down underneath notes, I have the option to  add a checklist. The way to think of this is this is like adding subtasks. I'm going  to type in a few subtasks. There you see, I added two additional items. I'm going to test an  extra half cup of sugar and I'm also going to test an extra cup of sugar. Once I'm satisfied with my  task, I can click on close, and I now have my very first task on my task

list. Now that I've added  all of the details to this item on my task list, I want to show you one more way you could  very quickly update some of the details. When you have your task selected, you'll see these  tabs appear across the top. I can click on these and I could very quickly update the progress.  I can update the priority and the due date. So, there are a few different places where I could  update those values. Opening up a business, I'm going to have many different tasks, not just on

e.  So, I'm going to go in and add a few more tasks. I've now added a few more tasks to my task list. I  want to next show you some different ways that you can view your task list. The tasks view by default  shows you all of the tasks that you've added. When I click on important on the left-hand side,  this filters my list down to the task that I added that I gave a high importance to. Similarly, over  on the left-hand side, if I click on planned, this will show me all the different tasks  that

I have on my task list that have a due date associated with them. So, these are two  quick ways to filter down your task list. Last, there's another view called assigned to  me and we'll get back to this in a moment. Back on my main task list, once I complete one of  my tasks, it's very easy to cross it off my list. All I need to do is click on that box and the  task disappears. Let's say I want to view all of the tasks that I finished. I could  simply go to the top right-hand corner. By default

, it’s set to show me all of my active  tasks. If I click on this, I can also toggle to view all of my completed tasks. And here I see  that the promotional video is done. I could also click on this box again and that'll bring it back  to my active list. To the right of all active, I can also filter my list. For instance, here  I could filter to tasks that are due this week and I could also look at tasks that have high  priority, and here I see my one task for tweak the cookie recipe. If you've

ever used Microsoft  To Do before, you might be wondering, what are the differences? Well, first off, they're pretty  similar. All the same tasks that I've entered in, tasks in Microsoft Teams also show up in Microsoft  To Do. It's the same service powering this. You do have a few key gaps though. If we look over  on the left-hand side within Microsoft To Do, I have a My Day view that shows me all of  the tasks that I want to complete today. They don't show up within tasks in Microsoft  Teams. S

imilarly, there's another view here for flagged emails and these also don't yet show  up in Microsoft Teams. Now with Tasks in Teams, it's the typical product development model where  you get out the base functionality first and then you'll continue improving the product. I would  bet that the My Day view and flagged emails will show up in Tasks in Teams, but it's going to take  a little bit of time before they show up there. Along with those, there are a few other gaps. I'm  going to throw up a

quick visual so you can see what those are. Feel free to pause if you want to  look at that list. Back within Tasks in Microsoft Teams, I'm not just limited to these predefined  categories. I can also add my own personal lists. To do that, let's go to the bottom left-hand  corner and click on new list or plan. Within here, I can give a name to my new list or plan. Now  once again, this brings together two different app experiences. A list is an individual list that  I use to track my own tasks

and a shared plan is used to track a team or a group set of tasks.  I want to add my own personal list. I'm going to call this personal. Then I can select where I  want to create this. If I want this to just be an individual list, I'm going to put this in my tasks  and then click on create. You now see that over on the left-hand side, I have an additional personal  or individual task list on the side. Now that we've taken a look at what we can do with personal  task lists, next, I want to show y

ou how we could create a plan or a group set of tasks. Once again,  let's go to the bottom left-hand corner and let's click on new list or plan. This time, instead  of creating a list, we are going to create our own plan. I'm going to create a plan for open New  York flagship store. For the Kevin Cookie Company, we're opening a new location and I'd like  to assign some tasks to my team members. Down below, I have this dropdown list again  where I can choose where to create my plan. I have three

different teams within Microsoft  Teams. This is for the New York flagship store, so I'm going to click New York City. Next, I can  choose a channel where I want to create this plan. Right now, I only have the general channel,  but you could choose whatever channel you want. Once you're all done, let's click on create.  Now that I've added a new plan, anyone who's a member of the team and the channel can now access  this plan. As an example, here I'm going to click up on the left-hand side on te

ams and I'm going  to go to the New York City location. Right here, I now have a new tab across the top called open  New York flagship store. When I click on this, this brings me back into the plan. This makes  it very easy for any of my team members to very quickly get back to our plan. I'm now back in my  open New York flagship store plan and I need to start pulling some tasks together so I can make  my team productive. Just like we could do before; I could very simply just enter a task and no

w I  could set various details related to this task. First off, I can assign it to someone  else. If I click on this icon, this will allow me to choose a name. Now Adele  always does fantastic work. Let me select her to work on the grand opening. I'm not just limited  to selecting one person. I could click here again, and I could type in an additional name. I want  Adele to partner with Nestor and see what the two of them can come up with. To the right, I  can set the priority just like before.

However, I have a few additional options. I could also set  urgent, and I could set low priority. This is a pretty important task. Let me set urgent. Just  like before, I could set a due date. I'm going to give him a little bit of time to work through  the details. I'll set it for next week on Friday. Next, I could set a bucket for this task. The best  way to think of a bucket is this is a category and, in a moment, I'll show you how you can create  new buckets. Once we're done entering the task

, let's click on the check mark. Now that I've  added the task to the list, just like before, if we want to edit some of the details of the  task, we can simply double click on it. This opens up all of the task details and here I could change  who's working on it. I could change the priority, the due date. I can add notes just like I could  do before. Now, I don't want to be too much of a micromanager, but I'm going to add a few items to  the checklist just to get their creative juices flowing.

This looks like a good list to start  and for now, I'm going to click on this check box that says show on card and in a moment, I'll  show you what this does. Next, I could also add some attachments and I could type in comments. Let  me type in a comment just to motivate them some. There's nothing like having your manager say, I'm  looking forward to seeing what you pull together. Now, up above, before I close this out, I want to  show a few extra things that you could do. If we click on the ell

ipses, I can copy this link to the  task. So maybe I want to email or maybe I want to message Nestor and Adele and I could include a  link to this task. I could also select a color, and this will help me more easily identify  it in the future. Once I'm all done, I'm going to click on the X up above. Now that  I've added all of the details for this task, just like before, when I click on the task, I  don't necessarily have to double click into it to edit the details associated with it. Here,  whe

n I have the task selected, I have these quick actions across the tabs on top. For example,  I could update the progress, who it's assigned to, priority, due date and the bucket as well. Now  that I've added my first task, I'm going to go in and add a few more tasks. I've entered a few  more tasks on the list and I've distributed them out to my team. Now, I couldn't just give them all  to my team. I felt like I needed to take at least one task, so I assigned one to myself. Now, just  like we cou

ld do in the individual My Tasks view, we also have access to some different ways of  viewing our tasks. For instance, I can click on All Active and I could filter between active  tasks and tasks that our team has completed. I could click on the filter, and I have a few  more filters than before. Just like before, I could filter based on the date, the priority,  and now I also have bucket and I could filter by individuals. For instance, let's say I want to see  everything Adele was working on, I

could click on her, and this filters the list just down to her.  Now, one of the great things about Planner is I'm not just limited to seeing tasks on a list. Some  people like seeing tasks visualized in different ways. Right up above by default, we're in the List  view, but we can also click into the Board view. And now here I see a board with cards representing  all of our different tasks. I mentioned we would come back to creating buckets and here I can  add an additional bucket. Let me clic

k to add a bucket. I'm going to call the first bucket Store  Opening. I'm going to now add another bucket for Staffing. The neat thing about a board view is I  could very quickly pull cards into these different buckets. For instance, here's a card that says  Hire Kitchen Staff. That's a Staffing-related work item, so I'm going to click on this and drag  it over into Staffing. Also, I have Hire Service Staff. I'm going to pull that over into Staffing.  This is very similar to a Kanban board where

you could very quickly move your tasks across the  board. Earlier, I selected for the individual tasks under Grand Opening, I wanted to show  them on card and here now I could see all of the sub-tasks on the card. Along with sub-tasks,  you can also show any notes on the card, so you have all that information available on  the top level. Now that we've looked at the board view, let's click into Charts to see what we could  do here. Here, I see a whole bunch of analytics related to my team. I co

uld see that our team or  group has five tasks remaining. I could see what bucket they sit in. I could see what the overall  priority is across all of my tasks and down below, one of my favorites, I can see how many tasks  are assigned on each member. Now, as the owner of this business, my one takeaway is I have a lot  of staff members who don't currently have work. I should probably go back and add some more  tasks. Last, let's click into the Schedule view. Within the Schedule view, I see a cal

endar view by  month showing me when all the different tasks are due. I could also toggle between a week view,  or I could come back to the month view. So, this is just one more way that you can visualize  all of your tasks on your team. The last thing I want to show is the assigned to me view. When I  click up here on my tasks, I can now see a list of all of my individual tasks that had been assigned  to me across all of my different group or team plans. Here, I see that I have one task assigne

d  to me. Now, this is a nice way to stay on top of any tasks that might arise from teamwork or group  work that you're doing. All right, that was a quick look at how you can start taking advantage  of Tasks in Microsoft Teams. If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up. If you  want to see more videos like this in the future, hit that subscribe button. That way, you'll  get a notification anytime new content like this comes out. And lastly, if you want to  see me cover any othe

r topics in the future, leave a note down below and I'll add it  to my list of videos to create. All right, that's all I had for you today. I hope you  enjoyed, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.