In today's video, I'll introduce you
to Microsoft To Do and I'll share some of my favorite tips. So, I recently
started to use To Do to organize my tasks. Before this, I used the combination of Planner,
Excel, and OneNote. I didn't use To Do because I wasn't sure how it integrates with the other
applications I use. Now, a program manager on the Microsoft To Do team was very kind to give me an
overview and answer my questions about integration, and basically, how I can use To Do as my main
tool. I've been doing that for over a month, and I'm very happy with it. So, in this video, I'd
like to introduce you to Microsoft To Do and in the next video, I'll clarify some of the questions
you might have around integration with other apps. Just like other Microsoft apps, you have a web
version of To Do, desktop, and mobile version. And all of these are synced together through your
Microsoft account. Now, To Do has become my single location where I have control over my personal
and work tasks. You can easily add tasks that come to you through email, or that are assigned
to you in Planner, or from Teams to your to-do list. You can also add random tasks that pop in
your head with the mobile app. Now, what's the difference between To Do and Microsoft Planner?
Well, To Do is more informal. It's for you and the people you work closely with. Whereas, Planner is
more formal and it's best for collaboration and those bigger, more formal projects. Now, let's rewind
back and let me show you how you can get to To Do. If you like to work with the web version,
just log into your office.com account, open the browser, type in "office.com," and log
in. Then, go to apps and you're going to find To Do right here. If you don't see it, click
on All Apps and you're going to see it then. Then, just click on it and it's going to take
you directly to the To Do app. To get the desktop version, go to the Microsoft Store, search for
To Do, it's right here and then, click on Get. To download the mobile version, just go to your
app store and search for it. Now, I mainly use the desktop version and mobile versions, so let
me bring up the desktop version and give you a quick overview. Once you launch the To Do app
on your desktop, you're going to come to a similar view like this one. It first asks you to focus on
your day. Now, if it's the first time you're using To Do, or if it's the start of your week, or your
day, you might have a lot of random tasks on your mind that you just want to add to your list.
They don't necessarily need to be done today, so you can go to the Tasks tab and just type in
the tasks. So, for example, let's say I want to learn Power Apps. Just type it in and press Enter.
Let's add some other tasks. Okay, so I've added in these tasks before I forget about them. Now,
I have the ability to add more details to them. If you click on this task, you get the card pop up
here. Each card can contain additional information. So, for example, if you want to add separate
steps to this, you can add it here. You can also add checklists here. Of course, you can also
create separate tasks out of this, so it's really up to you how you want to organize your tasks. You
can get a reminder. So you can be reminded of this, let's say, tomorrow, add a due date. You can also
create recurring tasks if this is something you want to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, or a certain
number of days. Just make your selection here, add a file if you need to, and add any notes or links
right here. Once you're done, you can just click away. So, for example, for HR report, let's say this
is something that's recurring. I need to do this every 10 days. I'm going to go to Repeat, go to
Custom and put in 10, and then click on Save. If there are tasks that can be grouped together, you
can create a list. So, let's say I want to create my tasks about Power Apps in a separate list.
I'm going to create a list here. I'll call it "Power Apps". Now, you can also add emojis to this if
you want. Just click on the emoji icon here and add your emoji. You can then either start typing
your tasks directly in here or bring in tasks from your tasks area. Either right-mouse-click on a task
you want to add to a list, and then move tasks to a list, or just click and drag the task to your list.
To update a task, you can click on it anytime and update information here. So, let's say I'm done with
Course 1, I'm going to place a check mark here. If you've finished with the entire task, you can place
a check mark right here, or use the shortcut key Control-D. That's going to add the task to your
completed task list. If you want to reverse it, just take away that check mark. You can get to a
lot of these options by right-mouse-clicking on a task as well. You can define its due date, you can
move the task, or you can directly delete the task. If a task is important, you can mark it
as important by clicking on the star sign. That's going to add it to your Important list
here. Now notice I have different backgrounds for the different tabs here, this is something that
you can adjust by updating your theme options. So, when you click on this additional options here,
update your theme. You can also change this daily depending on your mood. You also have the
option to show and hide completed tasks. Another cool thing you can do is to add tags to
your tasks. This makes it easier to find stuff. So, for example, under Tasks, let's add a tag to this
task here. Use hashtag and then type in the name that you want. So, I'm going to call this "Learn," and
then once you click away, this becomes clickable. Now, I'm also going to go to the Power Apps list
and add the Learn hashtag to this one as well. Now, if I want to search for something, I can
quickly do Control-F to bring up the search box, and then search for my hashtags. I only have these.
I get my filtered list here, and when I click on a task, it's going to show me the details of that
task. Now, in addition to this, you have the "Assigned to you" here. These are tasks that are assigned
to you either from other people's To Do lists or from Planner. So, for example, this one here
is from Planner. When I click on it, it allows me to view the details of the task, and I can open
it in Teams. If you mark a task as completed right here, it's going to automatically update it in
Planner. So, any changes you make to the task here will be updated on the Planner side as well.
Under Planned, you get to see the tasks that have due dates. So, for example, for this one, remember I
added a reminder for tomorrow, I have some that are here from Planner and some I created manually and
added due dates for. This helps you to plan your day. Now, talking about planning our day, that's
where "My Day" comes in. You get to collect tasks from different areas and add them to your day, so
you can concentrate on whatever is here. Now, you're also flexible here. You can add tasks directly to
My Day that will be shown for today. If you don't do them, don't worry, they're going to end up with
the Tasks. You can add them to your next day. So, the great thing about the My Day view is that, it
refreshes every single day. This way, when you open your To Do at the start of your day, you don't have
a list of 20 items that you brought over from the previous weeks. You have a fresh start every single
day. Now, great feature is the suggestions here. This takes a look at different areas. Either tasks
assigned to you, tasks that have due dates, and so on, and it allows you to add them to your today's
list. So, for example, this creating of the HR report is something I want to get done today, so I'm
going to add it to My Day. Just click on the plus, I see some tasks I recently added here, just
click on the plus to add them to your day. You can also add them from here to your day. Just
click on a task and drag and drop it to your day, or use the shortcut key Control-T. I guess T stands
for Today. Once you're done with these tasks, just place the check mark beside it and
you'll see it in the completed section. If you don't do it today, you can see it again
under Suggestions and just add it back in the next day. Another great thing with To Do is
the ability to keep track of your flagged emails. So, I'm just going to bring up Outlook, and let's
say this is an email that I want to flag because I don't want to forget to do this. I'm going to
flag it in Outlook and it's going to show up in my to-do list when I switch to flagged email. Now,
we just have to wait a second for this to refresh and it popped up right here. So, when I click on
this, I can see the content of that email. I can add it to My Day if I want. Set a reminder, update the
due date, or open it in Outlook if I want to get to the original email. Whenever you're done with this
task, you can add a check mark and this also marks it as completed on the Outlook side. Now, another
way you can add tasks from Outlook to To Do is just by dragging an email to your task. So, I'm
in the Outlook desktop. When I drag and drop it to my tasks here, this is going to open up this item
as a task. Now, this is a completely separate item. I can add other information to this if I want, and
then, I'm going to save it. In this case, this task is now added to my tasks list here. So, let's just
wait for this to update and the task is right here. Okay, so flagging an email in Outlook shows it
under Flagged Email, whereas dragging it to the taskbar adds it as a separate task. Now, when it's a
separate task, I can go ahead and delete that email in my Outlook and it's not going to delete
my task. My task is independent to that email. Now, there is a lot more to Outlook integration
than what you just saw, but because this video is already getting super long, I'm going to address
integration in a follow-up video. So, not just integration with Outlook but also integration
with Microsoft Teams. But, one thing you should know is that To Do is not really integrated with
OneNote. If you use the to do tag in OneNote, those are not synced to Microsoft To Do. So they have
nothing to do with one another. That's actually what I was using before to track some of my tasks.
But now, I've switched to To Do. Before we wrap up, let me just show you some settings here. Because
in case you don't have the ability to see flagged email or task from Planner, you need to double
check your settings. So, go to your profile here, go to Settings and check if everything is
according to what you want. You can pin this to the taskbar, you can update your theme color, you can
hide tasks that you don't need. So. let's say if you don't use the Important section, you can turn this
off, so that you don't have to see it. If you want to view completed items by default, turn this on.
If you want to turn off the connection to Planner or turn off the ability to see flagged email, you
can control that right here. Okay, so double-check these settings and go with what feels right for
you. Now, one last thing to mention is the ability to add others to your task list. So, for example,
let's say I want to add my colleague to join me on this list, I can click on this sharing icon here
and create an invitation link. This way, anyone in my organization with this link can join and edit
this link. Once I create this link and share it with them, they're going to get access to this
list in their own to-do list. Now, you can always manage their access right here. I'm just going to
copy this link and send it to them. Once they're added, you can click on an existing task and assign
them this task. You can also directly create a task here and "@mention" them directly in the task
bar. I hope you found this video useful and you'll feel more comfortable using the To Do app. If you
have any questions, feedback, or tips of your own, please share below. I'd love to see these. Thank you
for watching. Do hit that thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe if you aren't subscribed
yet, and I'm going to see you in the next video.
