When working on multiple projects, teams, organizations, and initiatives, the little things often fall through the cracks. With the wide variety of collaboration tools at our disposal, these simple asks can come in the form of a Teams message, email, or loop component, and we forget about them as the world continues to work. Once the task is no longer top of mind and off the screen it’s often “out of sight, out of mind” or worse, deleted by retention policies.
Longing for a solution to this age-old problem? With a simple click, you can take a Teams message (chat or channel conversation) and add to Microsoft To Do.
When in Microsoft Teams, locate the ellipsis (…) to access more features and find the option to Create task. When selecting Create task, this starts a quick Power Automate workflow that prompts information about the task.
When populating the task information, make sure to add in the details, notes, and attachments that would help in the future. For me this usually looks like meeting notes from a recent call, client requirements, or even the email thread! By default, the link to the message is populated as well as the content in the title – this is usually overfilled with information so I will typically update it to be cleaner and easier to understand at a quick glance.
Once the task is created, I can use Microsoft To Do for tracking and catching up and prioritizing my tasks. Microsoft To Do can be accessed through the Tasks by Planner and To Do (Planner) app in Microsoft Teams, through the browser, or my personal favorite, the desktop app!
As you can see within To Do, I am able to view my tasks, flagged emails (!!) as well as a curated “My Day” view that updates as tasks are assigned due dates. The My Day tab gives me insight not only into the tasks I’ve created that day, but also tasks I’ve assigned myself for that date and even the tasks I complete throughout the day. This has been a huge time saver for me when trying to recall what I’ve accomplished or when asked about a particular deliverable. Having this record is amazing!
For Planner users out there, tasks assigned to me through Planner can appear here too! This is a quick and easy way to keep track of all your work items across many other platforms. Have you used To Do yet?