Microsoft Serves Up Task Feature in Teams & Office 365

Microsoft has rolled out Tasks in Teams that packs information from other apps like Microsoft Planner and To Do and will be made available to Microsoft 365 users as well.

Microsoft has initiated a gradual rollout of Tasks in Teams for a small group of users. The feature, announced in 2019 during the annual Ignite conference is conceived as a task management solution for Microsoft Teams users. Following the initial rollout, a broad introduction to the rest of Teams users will continue through September.

Tasks in Teams consolidates Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner and is designed to enable users to access their tasks in a single place, eliminating the need to switch between multiple applications. Within Teams, Tasks will be available as an app on the left side pane and as a tab within separate channels. 

Learn More: Microsoft Teams Turns Focus to Engagement, Virtual Avatars & More With New Updates

The side pane app will comprise of both To DO and Planner while the tab within channels will consist only of the Planner app. To avoid confusion, the company has set forth a nomenclature schedule as described in the image below.

Tasks in Teams will feature new functional and aesthetic improvements.  Some of the highlights are: 

• Availability of Tasks in Teams spans across the desktop, web and mobile platforms. Addition of Tasks in Teams on any of the platforms will be synchronized with the other. 
• Microsoft has included a top-down approach to creating, assigning and publishing tasks for an organization’s employees. Within it, corporate leadership, upper management can create and target and push tasks to relevant employees for a more uniform approach to work execution.
• Tasks in Teams will be available in Board, Charts, Schedule, and List views on desktop and web clients. Mobile devices, however, will only have List view.
• With List view, users will have the ability to edit multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Users can import externally created tasks, i.e., tasks created in apps other than To Do and Planner via Graph API and Power Automate.

Learn More: Increased Productivity and Improved Employee Experience: What Hibobs Integration With Microsoft Teams Aims to Deliver

In addition to Teams, To Do and Planner endpoints are available in Cortana, Outlook, Microsoft Launcher, and Word, Excel & PowerPoint. Mary Votava Sheppard, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft wrote, “Our vision for tasks in Microsoft 365 revolves around these core principles: Coherence, Intelligence, Integration.”

Outlook

The task experience in Outlook allows users to:

• Convert emails into tasks by drag and drop functionality, flagging it in Outlook or via Create a Task
• View and organize activities in Outlook through My Day.
• Utilize Outlook search to pop up the top three tasks for convenient access
•  Leverage Cortana to identify and prioritize actions

Word, Excel & PowerPoint

With the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint integrations, users can assign tasks directly with @mentions. This sends a task notification via email to the assignee. This function is responsive at the other end also, that allows assignees to respond directly from the email. Integrations for Work and Excel are available as of now, with PowerPoint soon to follow. 

Microsoft is currently on a winning streak with Teams becoming the fastest growing app, notching 13 million Daily Active Users (DAUs). ZDNetOpens a new window reported on Tuesday that the company ‘surpassed $50 billion in commercial cloud revenues in FY’20,’ with $20 billion coming from Microsoft 365 alone. Microsoft, like its big tech peers, has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the remote work boom.   

Let us know if you liked this news on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!