Optimize Task Planning With Microsoft 365

When we look for ways in which to optimize our processes and projects, as well as increase our productivity, we can agree that there is a factor that always repeats itself. Have good planning.

The lack of time and the large number of tasks to be carried out daily are a reality. Therefore, defining good planning that allows us to organize tasks and control results is key in any project both in the work and personal sphere.

Its importance lies in its influence on the effectiveness and productivity of business activity, as well as of workers. Poor management can lead to financial losses, but also mistakes that lead to bankruptcy.

However, everything has a solution! We currently have a variety of tools that help us in the daily management of tasks and, ultimately, productivity.

Microsoft 365 Towards Productivity

Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365, has 3 tools focused on organizing tasks and work shifts: To Do, Planner, and Shifts. We will talk about these later since, first, we want to highlight some key points of the solution.

• Work in mobility: the solution allows us to work anywhere, at any time, and from any device.
• External collaboration: it has a functionality that allows general collaboration. All tools have collaboration functionalities to work both with colleagues and with people outside the organization (suppliers, customers, partners).
• Business security: data centers are highly protected. Our data will be encrypted and will be stored with sufficient security to avoid attacks or other types of inconveniences. In addition, it has tools that manage security and user access.
• Teamwork in real-time: we can work on the same document and in real-time with two or more people at the same time. All this without overlapping and seeing the changes updated instantly.

For its part, the solution has two applications to highlight:

On the one hand, smart email, which is the most used. With this, we can highlight the most important messages thanks to the smart inbox. It also allows us to keep our schedule up to date with an integrated calendar, as well as find what we need faster with improved searches.

On the other hand, Microsoft Teams, the work environment par excellence. Thanks to this application we will be able to keep what we need to share in a single place with tools that allow us to collaborate in real-time. In addition, it has communication tools (chat, calls, video calls, meetings) as well as screen and file sharing functionality. Your goal is to work as if all employees are together.

But how do I organize myself? We explain the three-star tools for Microsoft task planning.

Plan Your Way To Success

1. To Do

The main objective of this tool is that we focus on the tasks that we have to perform both professionally and personally. Thanks to your smart daily planning we will fulfill all our tasks and get personalized suggestions to update the to-do list.

In addition, you can access your lists from anywhere and at any time, and of course, from any device. So we can link it to our email. In this way, when we want to generate a task from an email, we will simply have to select the flag icon flag-mail. After this, the task will appear in the list called “Email marked” and so we will not forget what we have to do.

Lastly, we can share lists with other people. In this way, we group the tasks by categories or workgroups and we can assign each one to the corresponding person.

2. Planner

Microsoft Planner is a simplified tool dedicated to project management applying cross-department collaboration. This allows us to organize ourselves more quickly thanks to its ease of use and its visual organization. Each plan has its own panel where we organize the tasks in “labels”. These can be classified according to the status or the user to whom it has been assigned.

On the other hand, it offers us great and easy collaboration on tasks, as well as attaching files and even having conversations without changing the application. This means never missing a beat since, in addition, it allows us to work from any device and receive notifications via email when we are assigned a task.

3. Microsoft Shifts

Shifts are the tool that, instead of planning tasks or projects, allows you to plan and manage work shifts.

Within this, we can manage various elements. For example, we can create shift schedules from scratch or import them from Excel. Thus, it allows us to create groups with their name and location, as well as the shifts of each employee.