Tasks and Time Management in Outlook : New Features

The Outlook Gadgets are here!!!

mmacbeth — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:27:00 GMT

I am excited to announce that the Outlook 2007 gadgets for the Windows Vista Sidebar have just been posted to the web! Check them out:

· Outlook Upcoming Appointments – shows you your upcoming appointments.

· Outlook Tasks – shows you your tasks and flagged mail all in one place, plus gives you an easy way to enter tasks, just like the To-Do Bar.

Now you can have all of the To-Do Bar goodness right alongside all of your other Vista gadgets.

Enjoy!

-Melissa

P.S. Since this was first posted, new versions of the gadgets have been put up on gallery.live.com (12/14/06)

Check 'em out!

Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 1

mmacbeth — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:16:00 GMT

The following is the first in a series of two posts from Jon Kaufthal, a program manager from the Project team.

- Melissa

Hi Outlook task fans--I’m excited to introduce you to Project Server’s integration with Outlook. Tasks are a big part of the Project/Project Server experience, and our integration is all about putting you in control and letting you see your Project Server tasks where you want them—which for many of you is good old (err…new!) Outlook. You can then report status back to Project Server from within Outlook.

If you haven’t worked with Project or Project Server before, here’s a quick overview: Project is a powerful tool for managing projects, and Project Server works with Project to centralize data about your projects—and tasks, issues, risks, your organization’s people and their time, and more. Project Web Access (PWA) is a Web interface to Project Server where team members can log in and see what’s assigned to them, report status back to the project manager, get reports, and more. Project is the tool for the project manager, while PWA is geared towards everyone on a project—project managers, team members, execs, and managers. Project and Project Server are a fairly structured way of managing work, but they can be incredibly powerful in helping you stay on track and use your resources efficiently. For more detail, see the Office preview site on the Enterprise Project Management Solution, Project 2007 generally, and Project Web Access 2007. Also check out Erika Ehrli’s blog post on Project Resources, including links to more Project team bloggers.

Here are a few basics about Project Server-Outlook integration:

· This feature works only with Project Server/Project Web Access, not standalone Project Standard/Pro

· It integrates with both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007

· This post discusses the Project Server 2007 Outlook integration feature, though there is a similar feature for Project Server 2003

· Though built as a COM add-in for Outlook, this feature comes “in the box” with Project Server. From the Project Web Access “My Tasks” page, you’ll see a “Set up Outlook Sync” link on the Actions menu.

OK—so once you’ve installed the add-in, you’ll see a new toolbar in Outlook:

These two buttons are the keys to understanding the Project Server add-in for Outlook. Its purpose in life is basically to sit between Project Server and Outlook, and to manage the communication/sync between the two. Note that it’s not a single “sync” action, because you may want to import fairly often but then only send updates to the project manager, say, at the end of the week. You can also schedule these actions, which basically just tells the add-in “click import/update for me every x number of hours/days.”

Assuming you have tasks assigned to you in Project Web Access, and once you’ve entered the URL, clicking Import will log you in and bring up a dialog like this:

This preview lets you know what you’re about to update into Outlook. Note that these are tasks assigned to YOU—the add-in is all about team members seeing their own tasks in Outlook, not letting a project manager see his entire team’s work—that’s what Project is for!

Click OK, wait a few seconds, and…

<Applause!>

...these tasks will appear in Outlook, right next to your existing tasks. Other than name (“Task Name – Project Name”) and category, they’ll be indistinguishable from your existing tasks.

Actually, tasks is the default, but if you prefer you can have these show up as calendar appointments in Outlook. Either way, you get all of the extra Project Server goodness, and can maintain a 2-way updating of your info. You control this and other settings from a new tab created in Outlook’s Tools | Options named “Project Web Access”.

One more note if you’re showing imported Project tasks in the Daily Task List in the Outlook calendar: you may want to consider changing the Daily Task List to sort by Start Date, so that you don’t get caught off-guard when you have a task that spans a few days/weeks.

Once your Project tasks are in Outlook, you can treat them just like regular tasks (or appointments). More on this topic (i.e. what Project tasks look like in Outlook) to come in my next blog post…

-Jon

P.S. If you’re interested in Project Server but don’t want to set up your own server, some of our partners offer hosting.

Project Server Tasks in Outlook: Part 2

mmacbeth — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:23:00 GMT

The following is the second in a series of two posts from Jon Kaufthal, a program manager from the Project team. Click here to see the first post.

- Melissa

For those of you new to Project and Project Server, see my first post before reading on. What follows is what tasks from Project Web Access (PWA) look like in Outlook.

When you double-click to open a Project task in Outlook, you’ll notice some differences. Here’s what a task item from Project Web Access looks like:

Some things to notice here:

· Existing “standard” Outlook task fields—like Subject, Start (start date), Finish (due date)

· Existing “advanced” Outlook task fields—like Actual work and Total work

· Project Server-specific fields—like Project name, Task hierarchy, remaining work

· The project name is set as the task’s category. You already know about the great categories improvements in Outlook 2007, so this allows you to create some powerful views by category/project in Outlook.

· The “inner tabs” to switch between task management and timesheet. Task management is for updates going to the project manager—and might be in the form of, for example, percent complete, while the timesheet is likely going to some kind of accounting/billing process, and will be in the form of hours per day. Besides task status, PWA provides a complete timesheet where you would also track things like vacation time and sick time.

Clicking on the inner “Timesheet” tab, that section changes to look like this:

In this example, you might update your percent complete, remaining work, and some timesheet values. Once you’ve updated status in Outlook, you can:

· Immediately update via the buttons on the form

· Save for later (save locally to Outlook, don’t tell Project Server just yet)

· Update this and any other changed tasks to PWA via the toolbar button

· Cancel

You’ll only connect to PWA when importing or updating, but you can make local changes and save them for later even when disconnected. Once you’ve updated back to PWA, your status flows back through the system as if you had been logged into the PWA site—it will be incorporated back into the project plan and your organization’s reports.

So if you can do this all through PWA, what’s the point of the Project Server add-in for Outlook?

· Lower overhead for you, the team member—use the tools you already use

· Give you a single view of all your work—personal tasks and Project Server-based tasks

· Management gets better reports, because they have more buy-in from team members—which leads to better data

I’ve had to gloss over some subtle points and leave out a bunch of detail to keep this high-level, but we’ll keep an eye on comments to see if there’s interest in future posts on this topic. Thanks for reading!

-Jon

Some related info:

· Project Server blogs and books

· Project Server 2007 home page

· Overview of Project Server 2003 Outlook integration

· If you’re interested in Project Server but don’t want to set up your own server, some of our partners offer hosting

Make that PST show up on the To-Do Bar

mmacbeth — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:30:00 GMT

Do you have a pst or an archive that has tasks and flagged mail it, but the tasks and flagged mail don’t show up on the To-Do Bar? Here’s how you can make it work!

Right click on the name of your archive, (in the picture below, the archive is named “StuffForToDoBar”), and select ‘Properties for “<name of your archive>...”’

In the dialog that appears, check the box next to “Display reminders and tasks from this folder in the To-Do Bar”

Viola! Tasks and flagged mail from your archive in the To-Do Bar!

Outlook 2007 and Getting Things Done

mmacbeth — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 23:42:00 GMT

Every now and then someone asks about how to use Outlook 2007 with the Getting Things Done (GTD) /Take Back Your Life! methodology, which suggests heavy use of categories and tasks to manage your mail, tasks, and life. Here are some tips for getting started with Getting Things Done in Outlook 2007:

1. Categories – Categories are now unified across all of Outlook. To set up your categories, such as @home, @work, @phone, @e-mail, etc. by clicking on Actions->Categorize->All Categories. If you used categories in the past, your categories may already be set up for you. (When migrating between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, all flagged mail becomes categorized with the corresponding color category (e.g. Red Category for Outlook 2003 Red Flags), all Calendar labels become categories, and all categories that had been used on Outlook 2003 Contacts and Tasks are migrated forward. All categories that were never used (e.g. the “Hot Contacts” category) do not get migrated.)

2. To-Do Bar – The To-Do Bar, the panel on the right side of the main Outlook window, works much like the legacy Task Pad did. To best fit GTD, change the arrangement in the To-Do Bar to be Arranged By: Categories by clicking on the “Arranged By: Due Date” header in the To-Do Bar and selecting “categories.” Your tasks will now be arranged by category. To collapse all of the headers (category names), right click on one of the category headers and select “Collapse all headers.”

3. Flagging – In Outlook 2007, flagging a mail makes it appear as a task in the To-Do list. To make this work for GTD, set your default flag to No Date by right clicking on the flag next to a mail item and selecting “Set Quick Click…” In the dialog, select “No Date” in the drop down menu. This way, you can flag your mail to make it tasks without a start date.

4. Quick Click Category – Categories have now been added (made more visible) in mail and they now have color. You can apply a category to a mail item by just clicking (and right clicking) on the square box on the right side of your mail items. To make it even easier, try setting the quick click category to your most frequently used category, such as @ E-mail, by right clicking on the category square next to a mail item and selecting “Set Quick Click…” In the dialog, select your most frequently used category from the drop down menu. Now next time you click on the square next to your mail, you can apply your default category in one click.

5. Reminders – by default, when you set a due date on a task, the reminder is turned off in Outlook 2007. (We did this because the default flag has a due date so reminders would be firing all the time.) If you only use due dates rarely (i.e. not for the majority of your tasks), then you may want to turn setting reminders with due dates back on by going to Tools->Options->Task Options.

Now when you receive an e-mail that requires you to take some next action, you can flag it in the mail list view, then categorize it and then rename it in the To-Do Bar with your next action. If you want to get it out of your inbox, drag the mail to a project or other folder. Doing so will keep the item on your To-Do Bar/Daily Task List, but it will make your Inbox much cleaner.

When you are done with the task, just click on the flag next to the task to mark it complete. It will disappear from the To-Do Bar (completed tasks are filtered out) but it will continue to exist in the mail or task folder where you filed it.

If you want to schedule time for your tasks, you can go to the calendar and drag them from the To-Do Bar or Daily Task List on to the Calendar.

An alternative, and much faster approach is to drag the e-mail to the To-Do Bar under the category that the mail belongs to, and then drag the mail to the reference folder. In this way, the mail gets flagged, categorized, and filed for reference with two drags.

If a task pops into your head, you can type it into the To-Do Bar and hit return, and a task will be created. You can then drag it into the appropriate category grouping. (If you aren’t seeing the new item row in the To-Do Bar, you may need to reset your To-Do Bar and then arrange by category again.)

Let me know how this works out! And of course, please post other tips!

-Melissa

By Popular Demand

mmacbeth — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:49:00 GMT

From Hank Leukart:

Working at Microsoft is the most fun when we get to fulfill customers’ dreams – or at least their software needs. Sometimes, we hear a feature request so often from so many different customers that it becomes clear that it’s a feature we need to deliver. Nevertheless, some customers’ feature requests are so small and simple that they never seem to fit into our grand visions. With every software version, we try to innovate with ground-breaking features, and occasionally, we forget about the simple features for which customers are clamoring.

When this happens, there’s usually a Microsoft Program Manager running around at the last minute trying to sneak in tiny features before we finish a product to make sure our customers are happy.

Sometimes, that Program Manager succeeds. In my case, I am proud to announce that Outlook appointments and meetings now have time zone controls, allowing users to schedule appointments and meetings in the context of another time zone.

It’s a small thing – but it will help a lot of people.

For example, imagine that you work in Seattle but often schedule conference calls with co-workers in Kathmandu. Your co-worker in Kathmandu sends you an e-mail asking you to schedule a conference call at 2 PM. Of course, your co-worker wants the call to take place at 2 PM in his local Kathmandu time, but a meeting like this is difficult to schedule in Outlook 2003. To schedule such a call in previous versions, you must create a new Meeting Request and then mentally calculate what time 2PM Kathmandu time is in Seattle – in this case, it’s especially hard because Kathmandu uses a time zone 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, so the meeting should be scheduled at 2:45 AM Pacific Standard Time.

In Outlook 2007, it is much easier to schedule such a meeting. A customer can simply create a new Meeting Request, click the Time Zones button, choose 2 PM for the meeting’s start time, and then select Kathmandu from the list of time zones. That’s it!

We also know that business travelers like to add flight itineraries to their calendars. This feature also helps that problem, because appointments can be created with a start time of 9 AM in Seattle and an end time of 5 PM in New York City.

Yes, it’s a simple feature – but sometimes, simple features that solve small problems are exactly the kind of features our customers want. More importantly, this feature is only one building block toward better support for cross-time zone scheduling in Outlook.

How I work with Outlook 12

mmacbeth — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 07:19:00 GMT

Now that Beta2 is out, it seems like high time I explain how I use the new time management system in Outlook to manage my tasks and e-mail. There are many ways of managing one’s time, and what follows is just my approach. Fortunately, the new system is pretty flexible – though I will admit that I use all of the defaults (except setting my e-mail in conversation view in the Inbox for reasons I explain later.) I’ll begin with how I start my day:

I take the bus to work, which is great in some ways because it allows me to mentally prepare for the day ahead. Part my preparation is to look at my SmartPhone and see what appointments I have to look forward to that day. This exercise is followed by looking at my tasks. I happen to like using Oxios To-Do List because of the tidy way it displays my tasks. I usually enter a few more tasks on the way to work to clear my mind. As I enter these tasks, I try to make the first word a verb that summarizes my next action: Call John, E-mail Cathy @ UCEF, etc. This extra step of being careful when entering a task makes it easier to do the task later. It is no fun to stare at an item, knowing that you have to do something, and not knowing what to do next. When I get to work, I sync* my phone, which puts my new tasks into my Outlook To-Do Bar. (*I don’t have a data plan, so I sync over a wire.)

Next, I spend about 20 minutes going through my e-mail. I use rules extensively to move mail from distribution lists to other folders, so all of the mail in my inbox is something that I generally have to deal with one way or another. If I have to deal with e-mail sent to a distribution list (sometimes that becomes part of my job description), then I make it a task to explicitly deal with those e-mails separately in one sitting. When I go through my e-mail, I try to follow the 4-Ds – Delete, Do, Delegate, or Defer, and I file the majority of the undeleted portion of my e-mail to get it out of my sight. I also categorize some mail either “1:1 with Aime” (my boss) and/or “Feature Crew” when there is a mail that I need to discuss with either my boss and/or my core group of developers and testers during our weekly meetings (I also flag these e-mails for the days that we are going to meet.)

I “defer” an e-mail,

1. because I know it will take a while to read (i.e. longer than a page),

2. is something that will require a carefully crafted response,

3. is something that requires additional action from me, etc.

To defer an e-mail, I flag it. Most of the time, I just use my default flag of “Today” – with the knowledge that I will retriage the e-mail the next time I look at my To-Do Bar. If it is something that requires my time, but is less important, I will generally flag it for “Tomorrow.” If it is something that I want for reference that I know I will be referring to frequently in the short term, I mark it with a “No Date” flag so that it appears at the top of the To-Do Bar, and then I collapse that group until I need it. A recent example has been for common responses to distribution list questions. For instructions and other reference tasks, I drag the mail to the “Later” group which I created by setting one task to a hundred years in the future.

When I send e-mail to someone who I need a response from, I flag it for myself when I send it – and then I change the name in the To-Do Bar to start with “Follow Up: Name of person” or just “FU:” (though that sounds kind of bad now that I write it… J ) This way, I know that my next action on that task is to send another e-mail. If I am making a promise to do something, I always flag it for myself so that I have reminder in the To-Do Bar to keep my promise.

After I flag an e-mail, I either leave it in my Inbox, if I suspect that there might be more action on the thread, or I file it, if I am the next/last action. In my mind, if it was important enough to make it a virtual task, then it is probably important enough to file, and that way I have a record of my actions. As new e-mail comes in, I return to the 4-Ds, but looking at my Inbox suddenly becomes less daunting. I should mention that I leave my Inbox in the conversation arrangement, that way as e-mail arrives, the full thread pops to the top of the list.

Next I focus on the To-Do Bar, where I move tasks around to other days and give the tasks/flagged mail new, more appropriate names that more closely tie in with the next action. To rename a flagged e-mail, I just type over the subject in the To-Do Bar. Changing the name of a flagged e-mail in the To-Do Bar doesn’t rename the subject of the e-mail – it just changes the task subject. I then categorize some of the tasks to help them stand out – purple is personal, red is important/don’t move. I generally move tasks from one day to the next by dragging them from one group to another. Rearranging my task list is part of being honest with myself about what I can and cannot accomplish in one day. In some cases that means sending an e-mail to someone who is expecting a lengthy reply and I let them know when I can get back to them (and when I do this, I flag it for myself on send.) It is better to let someone know that you will get back to them by some realistic date than have them thinking that you forgot about them, when all the while their e-mail has been staring at you from your To-Do Bar giving you angst.

One of my co-workers, pointed out that in the Calendar, each of the tasks in the Daily Task List is about ½ hour long – which makes sense given that most tasks, be they answering an e-mail or paying a bill, take about ½ hour. So… if your task list has more tasks in it than there are ½ hours in a day, then there is no way you can get it done and it is time to push something off or just admit to yourself (or your boss) that it isn’t going to happen. Being able to say no is a hard skill to learn sometimes.

If one of my tasks will take a long time (e.g. “Write blog entry”) I will block off time on my Calendar by dragging the task either from my To-Do Bar onto the Calendar or from the Daily Task List onto the Calendar. If I have a lot of meetings, I will move tasks to other days – I know that I can only accomplish so much in one day, and meetings take time.

If I am in a meeting taking notes, I will take notes in OneNote and then flag my action items just as I do in Outlook – and they will appear in my To-Do Bar (yeah OneNote!!!)

When I prepare for my 1:1’s with my boss, I look back over the tasks that I accomplished over the past week (Tasks – Completed View) and then I look ahead in my Calendar to see what tasks and meetings I have over the next week.

This is just my system and I don’t expect everyone to work this way. However, there are some things that I have come to realize that apply to any system:

1. Make time for e-mail.

2. Make time for managing your time – this is a hard reality that any time management system requires.

3. Be honest with yourself about what you can realistically do in a day.

4. Be honest with other people about what you can and cannot do – they will appreciate it.

Now that Beta1/Beta1Technical Refresh/Beta2 are out, how have you been using Outlook12 as your system? Do you use Action Categories (David Allen/Sally McGhee) and arrange your To-Do Bar by category? Do you use the Start Date arrangement? Do you use the Categorized Mail search folder? The For Follow Up folder from Outlook 2003?

How do you work? What is your system?

Addendum to How to show tasks from some folders and not others in the To-Do Bar - a how-to guide

mmacbeth — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:41:00 GMT

Andrew Coates was kind enough to point out that there is another way to hide a folder that is much, much simpler. Thanks Andrew!

If you have one particular folder that you want to hide, for example, a task folder of Christmas presents for your family (not exactly tasks, but tasks are a convenient place to keep such lists), you can exclude that folder by customizing the view. Here are the steps:

Click on the "Arrange By:" header in the To-Do Bar and select "Custom..."
In the Customize View dialog, click on the "Filter..." button.
Click on the Advanced tab.
Under “Fields” select “All Task Fields” and then “In Folder"
Click on the “Condition” drop down, and select “doesn’t contain”
In the value field, type the name of the folder you want to exclude and then click “Add to List” (Ok, Ok)

It may seem appealing to do the reverse and list only the folders that you want to include, but each folder in the mail hierarchy would need to be included for flagged mail to appear in the To-Do Bar, so excluding is actually better.

Mischa may still want to go the "Categories" route since he has so many folders he wants to exclude. For those of you with only one or two folders that you want to exclude, this way is much simpler. Thanks Andrew!

I would also like to thank Brandon Bloom for his VBA script (commented below)

-Melissa

How to show tasks from some folders and not others in the To-Do Bar - a how-to guide

mmacbeth — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 21:59:00 GMT

Recently, I received the following e-mail and I thought I would post my response:

Hi Melissa,

Since you’re so active on bloggin on Outlook I was wondering if you can help me solve this question. I have about 35 task folders in Outlook and by default this great new feature To-Do Bar scans all of them and puts about 300 elements in the bar. All I want To-Do Bar to scan is the original Task folder and maybe one other. Is it possible (or will it be possible) to tell this view (cause that’s what it actually is right?) which Task folders to scan? ...

With kind regards,
Mischa

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to turn off a folder or set of folders in the To-Do Bar (though it is something we thought about. From SQM data, most users do not have more than one folder.) There are a few tricks that you can do, however, to hide these tasks in the To-Do Bar. For example, you could create a new category: "Not In To-Do Bar." Here are the steps:

1. In the To-Do Bar, Arrange by: Folder (Click on the Arrange by: Due Date header in the middle of the To-Do Bar, and select “Folder”)

2. Right click the header of a folder that you want to exclude, and select Categorize-> “All Categories...”

3. In the “All Categories…” dialog, create a new category “Not In To-Do Bar”

4. Continue applying the “Not In TDB” category to all of the folder headers that you don’t want to appear in the To-Do Bar. (Note: you are just applying the categories to items in these folders – the folders themselves do not have categories on them. New tasks created/added to these folders will need to have the category added to them.)

5. Once you have finished, remove the “Not In TDB” category from your To-Do Bar View ()

a. click on the header in the To-Do Bar, and select “Custom…”

b. In the Customize View dialog, click on “Filter…” button.

c. Click on the Advanced tab.

d. Under “Fields” select “All Task Fields” and then “Categories”

e. Click on the “Condition” drop down, and select “doesn’t contain”

f. In the value field, add “Not In To-Do Bar” and then click “Add to List” (Ok, Ok)

And unwanted tasks are hidden from your To-Do Bar!

If you want to view your tasks in the To-Do Bar by category, start date, due date, just click on “Arrange by:” and select the appropriate arrangement: your filter will persist. If you want this same filtered view in the Tasks module, you will need to repeat step 5. The Daily Task List in the Calendar cannot have its view filtered by category, so in this case, you may want to minimize it – unless, of course, you want to see tasks with due dates and start dates from other folders in the Daily Task List.

-Melissa

The electronic time management revolution will not be televised

mmacbeth — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:54:00 GMT

Here is a post from Hank Leukart about the Outlook 12 Calendar.

-Melissa

Over the past 15 years, paper-based communication has been replaced by electronic communication: quick chats have become instant messages, letters and memos have become e-mail, and reports have become electronic documents. While this change is something that most of us now take for granted, it happened in an exceptionally short amount of time.

The move to electronic time-management tools has happened much more slowly. People still used paper-based planners, Post-It Notes, and legal-pad to-do lists by the truckload. Nevertheless, we are sitting on the edge of a ground-breaking shift to electronic time-management; electronic calendars are proliferating across all consumer technologies, including the Internet, mobile phones, portable music players, and even wristwatches. In the near future, electronic time management will be as common as e-mail is today.

For Outlook 12, we wanted to give people the tools to become full participants in this electronic calendar revolution by providing a natural home for all of their time-based information. Outlook 12 also tries to help by automatically burning those Post-It Notes you have sitting around your desk. Just kidding. While the Outlook calendar has served its users well over the past decade, when we started working on Outlook 12, we knew that there was a lot of room for innovation:

We wanted people to be able to more easily interact with their calendar and scan their calendar for information.
We wanted to make it easier for people to view, manage, and share calendars.
We wanted it to be possible to manage both appointments and tasks in a single place.
We wanted scheduling meetings to be easier and more reliable.

Side-by-side comparison of Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007

Interaction and Scanning: The Outlook calendar has undergone a major facelift in Outlook 12 -- without the help of any reality-TV makeover show -- but the improvements extend far beyond the aesthetic. Nearly every element of the calendar interface has been evaluated with an eye toward making the calendar easier to use, easier to interact with, and easier to scan for key information to help users better manage their time. In a later posting, I will go into detail about how we accomplished this.

In Outlook 12, it is easy to e-mail all or part of your Calendar, with varying levels of detail

Viewing and sharing: Outlook 12 fully supports the Internet calendar format ("iCal"), which allows Outlook users to import and subscribe to a wide-range of calendars available on the Internet, including sports calendars, community calendars, promotional calendars, and holiday calendars. Finally, I can import the schedule for the entire "Veronica Mars" and "Entourage" television seasons with a few simple clicks! Outlook 12 also gives users the ability to publish calendars on Microsoft Office Online for the public or a designated set of people. In addition, Outlook 12 can send calendars by e-mail in HTML and iCal format, it allows read and write capability for Microsoft Sharepoint calendars, and it improves its already full-featured sharing capabilities when used with Microsoft Exchange Server.

The Daily Task List in the Calendar

Daily Task List: Melissa has already discussed the To-Do Bar and Daily Task List at length in this blog, but the important take-away is that with a single-click, a person can flag an incoming e-mail or click and type to add a task below his Calendar in the Daily Task List. From there, it's easy to arrange and reschedule tasks by simply dragging them to different days or weeks. You'd never believe how much more my boss likes me now with my increased productivity due to better task management.

The Outlook 12 Scheduling Assistant Tab in Appointments

Scheduling Meetings: When used with Microsoft Exchange Server 12, Outlook offers a scheduling feature that suggests optimal meeting times to a meeting organizer, helping him find times where all attendees can attend. Exchange 12 also features a new "availability service" that provides always up-to-date availability information to meeting organizers. Outlook 12 provides improved meeting workflow, removing the need for meeting attendees to always accept meeting updates when they have already accepted the original invitation. Finally, improved time zone support in Outlook 12 makes it possible to schedule a meeting from the context of another time zone and also provides information about attendees' working hours; both of these features make it significantly easier to schedule meetings across time zones. Hopefully, this will mean more exciting, exotic travel for knowledge workers around the world.

-Hank Leukart, Outlook Program Manager

Make that mail an appointment

mmacbeth — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 03:58:00 GMT

How often have you received an e-mail that is about something you want to put on your calendar? For example, I received an e-mail about a presentation about Office Live.

I am interested in learning more about Office Live, so I want to go. What to do? In Outlook 2003 and earlier, I could drag the mail to the Calendar icon and then to the Date Navigator in the Calendar, but what if there was a better way? In Outlook 2007, all I need to do is drag the mail to the Date Navigator and presto! New appointment on the day of my choosing, with all of the mail's info right there.

Drag a mail item to the To-Do Bar to make it an appointment!

Change the appointment time and I'm all set.

Andrew Ash on SharePoint Tasks

mmacbeth — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:30:00 GMT

The following is from guest blogger Andrew Ash. Enjoy!

-Melissa

Hi! My name is Andrew Ash and I am a Program Manager on the Outlook team. I am working on connecting five of the most popular types of SharePoint Lists to Outlook 2007: Calendars, Contact Lists, Tasks, Discussion Boards, and Document Libraries. What follows is a little bit about how SharePoint and Outlook work together for better team and project collaboration.

SharePoint and Time Management

For many of us, there is a world of information outside of Outlook that is essential for managing our time. For example, intranet sites with team vacation schedules, group project calendars, and lists of action items that all impact what we need to do and when we need to it. Does this sound familiar? Starting with the Microsoft Office 2007 release of SharePoint, you will be able to connect specific SharePoint Task Lists and Calendars to Outlook, bringing all of your intranet time management information into one place - Outlook. These lists are read/write, which means you can make changes to SharePoint Tasks and Appointments through Outlook 2007 tools like the To Do Bar and Task Well and have those changes upload to SharePoint automatically.

Putting it together

Let’s start with a real-world example. I’m organizing a fundraiser in the next two weeks and I have asked Melissa to help me. To be successful, there’s a whole slew of actions Melissa and I will have to complete. To manage this project, I created the “Bowl-a-thon Fundraiser” Task List in SharePoint, pictured below. I assigned one task to Melissa (she needs some serious help bowling) and assigned one task to myself. Since Melissa and I will be working on this together, we can use this list as a single place to track our tasks and to monitor each other’s progress.

By clicking on the “Actions” menu, and then “Connect to Outlook”, as shown below, I can ask Outlook to connect to & download this Task List.

In Outlook, I will see the task “Send e-mail to recruit…” show up in my To-Do Bar because it is assigned to me. Outlook filters out tasks assigned to others in order to prevent the To-Do bar from becoming cluttered with work that isn’t for you.

Hovering my mouse over a task shows more information:

The To-Do Bar shows all of my tasks, not just my SharePoint tasks. To see just the tasks in this project, I can click on “Tasks” in the Navigation Pane and go to the “Team Site – Bowl-a-thon Fundraiser” folder and see the same view as I do on the SharePoint site because the entire list is synchronized into Outlook. As changes are made to the list, my synchronized list will update, so I can watch as Melissa makes progress on her bowling tasks and I can add new tasks and assign them to her (more on that below) – all without leaving Outlook.

Updating and re-assigning tasks is easy. If I find a task that needs to go to Melissa, I can double-click on it to open a familiar Task Inspector window. Here are a few key differences:

· SharePoint Tasks include an Assigned To field. Just like a task request, a SharePoint task has an Assigned To field. Unlike a task request, the owner of the task is posted to the SharePoint site, so everyone knows who is doing what.

· The body of a SharePoint Task is a shared, unstructured, space. One big difference between SharePoint Tasks and Task Requests is that SharePoint Tasks can be re-assigned by anyone, rather than just the person who requested the task. As the task travels between different people they can add comments to the body in whatever style they like. In the screenshot below, Melissa’s updated the task to let me know she’s waiting on a delivery, By the time the task is completed the body will have become this rich record of the decision making process. That record will also be more accessible to my peers because it’s stored on SharePoint rather than just in my one person’s mailbox.

· SharePoint Tasks come with context. At the bottom of a task you can see who last owned the task (“Last modified by:”), when it was changed, and a link back to the SharePoint site.

For example, I can assign the task “Watch “Essential Keys to Better Bowling” to Melissa by filling in the Assigned To: field and I can add a note in the notes field of the task, as shown above. As soon as I click “Save & Close” the task will disappear from my To-Do bar, but I will still be able to see it (and keep track of it) in my “Team Site – Bowl-a-thon Fundraiser” folder in the Tasks Module. Checking it later on I can see Melissa updated the task on March 14th.

Hope you enjoy using SharePoint 2007 and Outlook 2007 together for your next project. I’m looking forward to reading your comments.

Be well,

Andrew Ash

* For more information on SharePoint and its role in Collaboration see Kurt DelBene’s SharePoint blog.

Tips for the Outlook Tasks Module

mmacbeth — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 01:27:00 GMT

Below are some tips for the Tasks Module (most are oldies (will work in most versions) but goodies):

1. Outlook 12: See the thread of a conversation of a flagged mail in the Tasks Module: Here’s the scenario: You flagged a mail message, and now you want to see the full thread to see if there has been any more mail on it. Click on the infobar in the reading pane and click “Find all related messages.” A dialog will pop up with the messages in the thread.

The Tasks Module: Click on the Infobar to find all related messages

2. Change the location of the Reading Pane: Want to see more information about your tasks? Click View->Reading Pane and select the location of the Reading Pane – or turn it off!

Turn the Reading Pane on or off through the View menu

3. Tips for standard “Table Views:”

a. Change the sort: Want to see your completed tasks sorted by the subject, and not the date complete? Left click on the subject column header.

b. Add a properties to your view: What if you like Outlook’s out of the box views, but you want to add a checkbox? Right click on the header and select “Field Chooser.” A new dialog will pop up with a list of properties. Drag and drop the properties you want into the view, such as Complete.

The Field Chooser

c. Remove a property from the view: Don’t like a property? Left click on the column header and drag it off. Presto! Column is gone. This state will persist between sessions of Outlook until you reset the view.

d. Group your items: If you want to see all of your tasks grouped together based on due date, for example, right click on the Due Date column header and select “Group by this field.”

4. Customize the view even more: Want to change the way that overdue tasks are colored, but only in a particular view (look under Automatic Formatting…)? Want to add the “new item row” to the current view (look under Other Settings…)? Right click on the header and select “Customize Current View…” Or just click on “Customize Current View…” in the Navigation Pane. A dialog will appear that will let you customize the view almost any way you want, just click on the buttons. Note: You can customize the To-Do Bar the same way by clicking on the words “Arrange by:” in the To-Do Bar, and then select “Custom…”

Customize the View

5. Reset your view: Messed up your view? Click on “Customize Current View…” in the Navigation Pane. In the dialog that appears, click “Reset Current View” in the lower left corner. Note: You can reset your view in the To-Do Bar through the same dialog by clicking on the words “Arrange by:” in the To-do Bar and then selecting “Custom…”

6. Add a new property: Don’t have enough properties to represent your data? (For example, you are big fan of the Franklin Covey system and you want to add a more detailed priority field (A1, B1, A2, B2, etc.)) Right click on the header and select “Field Chooser.” In the dialog, click “new” at the bottom and create a new category that suits your needs.

7. Create a custom view: What if the default Outlook views are fine, but what if you are a big Franklin Covey user and you want your own view with your own properties? Here’s how to do it: Set up your view the way you want it, then click on “View” in the menu bar, and then “Current View,” “Define Views.” Click “New” on the right side. Decide if you want your custom view to be applicable to just the current folder, visible only to you or to everyone whom you share the folder with, or to all task folders, and then click OK. If everything is how you want it, click OK in the next dialog (the Customize View dialog) and then OK again and then you are done!

8. Share your tasks: Want your boss to see what you are working on? Right click on the Tasks folder and select Share Tasks… and send your boss a Sharing Request (in Outlook12) or enter your boss’ alias into the dialog that appears.

Sharing Request

9. Outlook 12: Reminders for all flagged mail: Want reminders on everything you flag in Outlook12? Go to Tools->Options…, click on the Task Options button and check the box next to Set reminders on tasks with due dates. (This box is checked in Outlook2003 and earlier, and off by default in Outlook12.)

Task Options

10. Short cut keys of fun:

a. Control-Shift-K creates a new task.

b. Alt-F1 turns on/off the Navigation Pane.

c. Alt-F2 turns on/off the To-Do Bar.

11. Outlook 12: Get your tasks, flagged mail, and flagged contacts from other stores to show up in the To-Do Bar: Right click on the store name in the Navigation Pane and select “Properties for <name of your store>…” In the dialog that appears next, check the box next to “Display reminders and tasks from this folder in the To-Do Bar.” Then click Apply and OK. Shutdown Outlook (restart) and open it again and you will see your tasks from other stores start to populate the To-Do Bar!

Store Properties

There are many other things that you can do in the Tasks Module – this is just a start. For more tips on tasks, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/assistance/CH062556521033.aspx, and for tips on table views (the standard views in Tasks are all table views) see http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/assistance/CH063564721033.aspx.

If you know some tips and tricks for tasks, please post them in your comments. Thanks!

The Tasks Module

mmacbeth — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:28:00 GMT

Click on Tasks in the Navigation Pane to get to the Tasks Module

Outlook's Tasks Module is the place to experience the full richness of Outlook's time management system. Like the To-Do Bar and the Daily Task List, the Tasks Module shows flagged mail and contacts, along with all of their tasks from Outlook, SharePoint, OneNote, and Project server.

Tasks Module

By default, the reading pane is on and is on the right side so that you can read your tasks just like mail (even your RSS feeds!) If you want to change the reading pane to the bottom to see more task columns, or turn it off so you can see more tasks, just click on View -> Reading Pane. Like the other modules (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Journal, and Notes), you can search in the Tasks module.

The Task Module gives you a place to focus just on tasks and pivot your task data in different ways. For example, you can see a simple list of your tasks, or look at a more detailed view by clicking on the different view options in the Navigation Pane. You can also filter the view to only show you active tasks or just the ones that you have completed. I find that the completed view is really useful for rolling up status for my boss each week.

You may also notice that there are multiple "task" folders listed in the folder section of the Navigation Pane. The top folder is the "To-Do Bar Task List," which is a search folder (essentially a virtual folder that persists a search query) that includes all flagged mail, flagged contacts, and tasks from across your different stores, including tasks in subfolders. The "To-Do Bar Task List" is the same folder that populates the tasks in the To-Do Bar and the Daily Task List, and it is the default folder of the Tasks Module. The second folder, "Tasks," just contains tasks in the current store and is a regular folder. Why two different folders? In Outlook, search folders cannot be shared through Exchange, cannot be drop targets when items are dragged to them, and cannot have subfolders, so we continue to show the Tasks folder to satisfy these scenarios. (If you see multiple "To-Do Bar Task List" folders, that is a known bug.)

Look for tips on the Task Module coming soon.

Hank Leukart on Color Categories

mmacbeth — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 02:22:00 GMT

The following is from guest blogger and fellow PM, Hank Leukart. Enjoy!

-Melissa

Greetings! My name is Hank Leukart, and I am a Program Manager for Microsoft Office Outlook. I have worked on Outlook 2001 for Mac, Outlook 2002 (XP), Outlook 2003, and Outlook 12; I’ve been involved in designing – among other features – Search Folders, the Mail Views, the Navigation Pane (originally called The Wunderbar), date-based For Follow Up flags, the To-Do Bar, The Daily Task List, the new Calendar’s visual look, and Calendar Overlay. Today, I’ll talk about the new Color Categories feature and how it improves information and time management in Outlook 12. Then, I’ll brace myself for your feedback to learn how much you love or hate me (or more importantly, this feature).

During the time I have worked on Outlook, I have heard reams of customer feedback. I usually keep an Outlook Note (am I the only one who uses these?) containing feedback and feature requests to which I refer back when I’m thinking up new features. When I set out to design the Color Categories feature for Outlook 12, I found some of these nuggets in that little yellow Note:

“I wish I could label my flag colors!”
“Six For Follow Up flag colors is not enough.”
“I wish I could assign multiple flags or labels to an item.”
“I love coloring my Calendar!”
“I like to group Mail and Tasks by project.”
“When I want to label or file an item, it’s hard for me to decide whether I should use a Folder, a Category, a For Follow Up flag, or a Calendar Label.”

In my experience, software companies (including Microsoft) are good at adding great features to their products but not always as good at reconciling how new features work with existing features, sometimes resulting in a confusing mess. We usually do this for the right reasons – we don’t want to make anyone unhappy by removing or changing existing features they’ve come to love – but often the outcome is not optimal.

Outlook Categories are a great example of this. First, Outlook 97 had Categories and Folders, two features unrelated to each other. Most people used Folders for Mail but Categories for Contacts and Tasks. Then, customers wanted to be able to color their calendars, so we added Calendar Labels, a feature totally unrelated to Categories. Then, customers wanted to be able to follow up on their mail with multicolored flags, so we added that feature – also unrelated to Categories. Including Automatic Formatting and Note colors, Outlook 2003 gave customers six different ways to label or color an item.

Thus, for Outlook 12, my mantra was, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” I imagined a world in which one feature could be used to label and color items of any type. That feature became Color Categories.

In concept, Color Categories are simple. With one or two clicks, you can add a color and text label to any item in Outlook. For me, my categories usually relate to projects upon which I am working. Thus, my Inbox workflow tends to work like this: 1) flag an incoming message with a date, 2) right-click on the message’s category column to assign a category that corresponds to a related project, and 3) arrange my To-Do Bar by Due Date when I want to focus on due dates or by Category when I want to focus on projects. I also categorize appointments with the same categories, based on which project a meeting is about. The same goes for Contacts; the people with whom I work on certain projects are categorized with the corresponding project categories. I even categorize my Notes by project. (I know, I’m the only one.)

Right click on category column to categorize an item

Some people I know prefer to use Color Categories exclusively as a way to mark items for later review. They tend to use the “Categorized Mail” folder to see all of their categorized items. Others use categories both to mark items for review and also to associate them with projects, which is possible because more than one Color Category can be assigned to an item.

Once you have categorized items, you can also search by Color Category in any module by typing the category name in the Instant Search pane. For example, you can type “Personal” or “category:(Carson Project)” to search for items to which those categories are assigned. If you’re feeling especially motivated, you can create a Search Folder for mail messages with a specific category by clicking File/New/Search Folder, selecting “Create a custom Search Folder,” then specifying the category as part of the Search Folder’s criteria. We’re hoping to make this process easier for Beta 2.

Search within a category with search syntax

Because I also have been involved in many of Outlook 12’s visual changes, some of my fellow Program Managers have joked that I am the “pretty colors PM.” Maybe for Outlook 14, it’ll be shapes.

Tip #1 for advanced users: you can assign a Shortcut Key to any category for easy assignment of your most-used categories. I use Ctrl+F12 any time I want to use my “Important” category.

Tip #2 for advanced users: if you right-click on an item’s Categories column and click “Set Quick Click…,” you can select a category that will be instantly assigned to any item when single-clicking on the category column.