From the course: Managing Projects with Microsoft 365
Managing tasks in Planner
- [Instructor] Whether you're planning a family get-together, business event, or a work project, you should organize and keep track of your work by breaking it down into tasks. In this lesson, I'll show you how to manage tasks in Planner and how to organize everyone's tasks to make sure the project is successful. I'll start from office.com. Select the app launcher in the top left corner and open Planner. I'll start by opening the June wedding plan that I've been working on. I've added a few due dates ahead of time. When you are assigned to a project, the first thing you want to know is what's assigned to you. The different group views are designed to help. In the upper right, it says the plan is grouped by bucket. This is a good view to use when you need to add new tasks. In the dropdown, choose Assigned To to see what's assigned to each person and the due date of each item. Joni told me they need additional help to accomplish their task of mailing invitations. I can assign a second person to this task by selecting it, selecting Assign To, and adding Isaiah. Now the tasks show up in both of their lists. To see your project status, you can switch to chart view by selecting Charts in the top center. Chart view gives a high level overview of how the project is progressing. This view shows the task count and the progress of each task. You can see the number of tasks by priority, bucket, and number of tasks assigned to each member. When I'm working on a big project, there are times when I need to see the tasks in a calendar view so I like to use schedule view. Select Schedule on the top menu next to Charts. Here you can see the tasks for the month, along with due dates and status. I'll go ahead and set the start date for a task. I'll select Plan the rehearsal dinner and in the start date dropdown select one week before the due date. Then close the dialogue. Planner now shows the dates this task is being worked on. I can easily move the date by dragging it to the desired date. Alternatively, I can drag the right edge to increase and decrease the length of time for this task. The schedule view is also great for adding new tasks and assigning them to a due date in one step. Let's say this client selected a venue that did not include a caterer. I'll select add task on the right, enter a name, select Caterer, and add it to the four to six months bucket. Select Add Task. From here, I can drag this task to the date that it's due. Seeing what needs to be accomplished by when and by who is key when it comes to projects. With all the different views available in Planner, your team can view all the right information at the right time.