Microsoft To Do is a great app to organize your day to day work and keep track of your tasks! If you have not checked it out yet, you should definitely do now! The only requirement is, you have to use an exchange online mailbox.

Microsoft To Do – What’s in it for you

The basic idea of To Do is to provide you a bucket where all your tasks are stored in. And by saying all I mean all – well almost. In To Do, you will find tasks assigned to you in a Planner board, flagged mails from your mailbox, and tasks you created yourself in the app. To Do also provides you some great options for organizing your tasks in lists and stuff like that.

When Planner is too big

Speaking of Shared lists, I think this is something many people do not use often, and I do not get why. A shared list is pretty much the same as a list you create for yourself, but as the name tells, you share it!

Often a planner board is too big for working with one or a few colleagues, and you may not want to have the whole office 365 group package coming with it. But you need a simple space to collect tasks for a group of people and keep track of them. If that’s the case, a shared list is what you are looking for!

Okay sold! – How does it work?

First, of all, you need to create a list if you do not have one yet. If you already have one which you want to share, you can skip this step! To create a list, you have to click on the text displaying “New list” and enter a name. Let’s call it “our first shared list”. You now have a basic list that is not shared and only open to you.

You then want to share this list with your colleagues. To do so, just click on the button showing to people in the top right-hand corner. Now you can copy the link or share the list via e-mail – it’s up to you. As I am using Microsoft Teams most of the time, I usually set it up using the link.

Now you can start adding tasks you want to share with the members of the list. You can add them just like you usually do. When clicking on an added task, the right information panel drops in, and you can provide further information and even assign the task to a person of your choice!

How I use Microsoft To Do

The way I use Microsoft To Do is like planning my whole day with it. At the beginning of the day, I open up To Do on my laptop or iPhone. I then scroll through my open tasks and decide which I want, well sometimes have to do today. After picking one task, I add it to the “My Day” list.

Critical tasks I mark up as important clicking on the star symbol, this way I can make use of the intelligent lists provided by To Do!

Especially when there are a lot of tasks I want to achieve this day, I even block time in my Outlook, which works really great when using the online apps or even the progressive web app of Outlook. If you have not checked my blog post on that topic, you should definitely do it because it can give you a boost in productivity for sure!