Hello, it's Matt, and welcome to Collaboration Coach.
This time we're going to look at some updates to the Outlook Calendar Boards feature
for Outlook on the Web.
I took a first look at this a few weeks ago
and there's already been some new features and updates to talk about.
So if you want to watch my first look at Calendar Boards,
hit the link in the top right corner now or check the description afterwards.
So this time we can look at three new features for Boards
that are rolling out now:
Creating new boards,
updates for collections
and much deeper integration with To Do.
So let's take a look.
Before we get started I just want to remind you
that Boards is only for Outlook on the Web - not the Outlook client,
and it only works with an Office 365 subscription.
These features I'm going to talk about are rolling out now
so you should either have them already, or you will soon.
To get to Calendar Boards, just open Outlook on the Web,
go to your calendar
then choose the view menu in the top right hand corner,
and then choose "board".
The first new feature allows us to create new boards.
Previously there was just one default board but now we can add new ones.
To add a new board, go to the view menu at the top right again,
drop that down and then go to the arrow to the right of the board label.
That will drop a second menu down and from that you choose "+ new board",
then type the name of your new board and choose "create",
and you'll see your new board with the default widgets - calendar, tasks and note.
And now you can start customising your board by adding new widgets.
If you go back to the view menu
you'll see your new board listed there
and you can switch back to your default board anytime you like.
You can also change the name of the new board and delete it from here too.
Now you can have separate boards for different pieces of work
or perhaps one for work and one for life.
Next let's look at some updates for collections.
So, collections are really useful
because they bring lots of widgets together on the board
and allow you to manage them as one.
So you can drag widgets into collections
and you can colour code them
and then move them around the board as one.
So here for example, I have a collection called "Project A',
and I can drag widgets into the collection, like this file here
and then I can move that whole stack of widgets around as one collection.
One thing I didn't point out in my first video was the ability to resize collections.
Although you can only stack widgets vertically in a collection,
you can resize the resizable widgets
and that will grow or shrink the whole collection.
If I take my tasks widget here and I resize it,
the whole collection grows.
When you want to add new widgets to a collection
you can use the "move to collection" button in the ribbon up here.
You just select the widget,
hit the button,
choose the collection you want to move to
and then the widget is moved.
So this is really handy because your board might become very large
and dragging the new widget to a collection might not be so easy.
You can also add due dates to collections
and this is useful if you're collecting up widgets for a purpose like a project,
and that work has a date attached to it like a deadline or a milestone.
So when you add a due date to your collection on a board
you can see it up here on the collection itself
and it will automatically create a task in Microsoft's To Do app
and this allows you to manage the task using all the cool features that To Do has.
And that brings me nicely to the next new set of updates I want to show you,
and that's the To Do and calendar board integration.
So just a quick reminder, To Do is Microsoft's personal task management app.
You can use it in the browser
and there are apps for most devices as well.
In this demo I'm going to show you how to use the browser version.
So let's look a little closer at how Boards interacts with To Do
and what happens when you add a due date to a collection.
Here you can see on my default board
I have a collection called "Seattle Project"
and it has a due date of the 22nd of July.
If I switch to To Do you can see that there is a new task list for that board
and it's called "calendar board default",
and there's a task there called "Seattle Project".
That was created for me by the board
when I added a due date to my collection.
Let me give you another example.
If I switch back to Boards and I go to another board called "Project B",
I have a collection here called "Paris Project", and that has a due date.
Now if I go back to To Do,
you can see there is another list that's been created for me called
calendar board "Project B",
and the Paris Project has been added as a task in that list.
Now that task is in To Do,
I can add steps, reminders, categories and files
and all the other cool things that To Do is really good at.
And if I complete the task in To Do
it will also complete the task on the board as well.
So they are my pick of the calendar board updates.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you next time.
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