Matt Wade’s Definitive Guide To: Tracking Tasks in Microsoft 365

Find the right M365 task management tool for you

Good task management across your life is a nirvana that app makers the world over have tried to solve; you need it to be efficient, effective, and successful in today’s working world. There’s a reason there are thousands of results among the Google Play and Apple App stores for task apps.

Microsoft is no different. Microsoft 365 (M365) provides a lot of ways to track tasks—some would say too many! That leaves us with plenty of confusion when talking about lists and tasks in Microsoft 365. Should you be using To Do? Or maybe Planner? What about Microsoft Lists and Tasks in Microsoft Teams? And now Microsoft Loop supports tasks too? What are we supposed to do!?

This eBook will provide an overview of the capabilities of the different task management tools offered within M365 and guidance to point you in the right direction as you consider the appropriate task tool to meet your needs.

Table of Contents: 

• Introduction

• Microsoft Planner

• Microsoft Lists

• Microsoft To Do

• Tasks in Microsoft Teams

• Microsoft Loop

• Which tool when?

• Conclusion

Get a Sneak Peek

• Get a capabilities overview of each tool

  To Do offers you a one-stop shop for personal tasks, Planner tasks, and flagged emails in Outlook. It acts as your entry point for your ongoing work and makes To Do a versatile tool in day-to-day business. Use the personal lists to manage your own tasks and plans, while keeping an eye on the tasks from shared projects or departments. In To Do, you can also plan the tasks for your day and create a to-do list for each day, as well as share your To Do lists with family and friends outside of work. (Pg. 11)

• Learn about the future of task management

  Microsoft Loop is a new tool that, among other things, adds more task management functions to the Microsoft 365 portfolio. Microsoft Loop is already on the rise, and the integration in chat and the video material from Microsoft already give an idea of how extensively Loop can impact our everyday work. The Loop component for tasks is available now and promises a new and different form of task management. (Pg. 17)

• Ask yourself: Do you want to store and manage tasks or present them in a single frame?

  Planner and Lists are great for adding and managing team-based tasks and task lists. To Do is great for adding and managing personal tasks and task lists. Tasks in Teams is essentially a viewport to see all of your tasks in Planner and To Do, right in Microsoft Teams. At this time, there is no integration to view any list tasks that are assigned to you in To Do and Tasks in Teams; that said, it’s easy to add a Microsoft List as a tab to any Team using its connector, so you have easy access to the list and your other tasks via Teams. (Pg. 20)