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, when 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 experience? 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, depending 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 fact,
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 everything 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 to 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 will 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 one. 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. Similarly, 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 you 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 teams 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 now 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 ellipses, 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, when 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 could 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 click 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 could 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 calendar 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 assigned 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,
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this comes out. And lastly, if you want to see me cover any other 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.