How did we get here?
In our research for Outlook 12, we* found that less than 30 percent of Outlook users use the Tasks portion of Outlook, despite the fact that during site visits, we saw that people desperately needed help organizing the action items they need to do. From our site visits, we found that people didn’t use Tasks in Outlook because a) inputting tasks was too hard, b) Tasks were hidden in a part of Outlook that few people visit, and c) the implementation of Tasks in Outlook did not provide a useful enough experience to compel users to visit it.
We then did research to figure out how to modify Outlook in order to help people to be more effective at managing their time. We looked at many different time management systems, including Getting Things Done by David Allen, Take Back Your Life! By Sally McGhee and her Microsoft training course, Managing Actions, The Organized Executive by Stephanie Winston, the Franklin Covey/Quest model, Time Management from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern, among others. What we found were some common themes:
- Create lists of things to do and remember
- Do tasks during scheduled time; set deadlines
- Organize by project
- Merge everything into one list
Several time management systems suggested ways to use Outlook’s existing time management system, but they seemed hampered, rather than helped by the technology. Thus, we tried to work out these problems by introducing the following four major feature areas:
Easier task input
- Flagging: We modified flagging to make it date-based and in some sense, to force the question: “when am I going to get to this?”
- Task Input Panel: We wanted to give people an easy, always-visible place to input tasks by typing a single line of text. Giving people a simple way to get tasks into the system helps people create lists of things to do and remember – instead of keeping it in their heads.
To-Do Bar (lightweight task management) : We wanted to provide people with a way to see their upcoming tasks and appointments without switching context to a heavyweight task manager. To merge everything into one list, we made the task list in the To-Do Bar include flagged items and tasks. We also encouraged other Office applications to make task creation easier and they did – OneNote now has flagging that creates tasks in Outlook (OneNote 2003 had Outlook task creation, but now it is even simpler), Project now creates tasks in Outlook, and downloaded SharePoint task lists automatically appear in the To-Do Bar if they are assigned to you.
Tasks on the Calendar (time-based task management) : We wanted to provide people with a way to easily schedule their tasks and look back on their calendar to see the full spectrum of what they had accomplished – with both tasks and appointments. To achieve this, we added the Daily Task List below the Calendar in weekly and daily views. Dragging a task from the Daily Task List onto the Calendar automatically schedules an half hour appointment to do that task.
Categories:
We also modified categories, giving them color, and made them available on almost all item types (mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes.) The hope is that people will use categories to organize their tasks by project, but with categories, we retained a great deal of flexibility; categories can be used any way one chooses.
I hope that the new Outlook 12 time management features work well for you and I look forward to your feedback.
-Melissa
*I am using “we” in this post because I am not alone in doing the research for the time management system in Outlook 12. All of the credit goes to Hank Leukart, Jeff Smith, Glenn Frankel and others on the Office team.
Comments
- Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Lack of Daily Task List, like my old Franklin planner had, is the main reason I don't use Outlook tasks. Looking forward to this feature... - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Nice stuff. Too bad that I'll have to wait up to one year to get my hands on it :/
tzagotta: a Daily Task List is (easily) doable with a custom view: In the customize view dialog click Filter, select the advanced tab and choose Due Date from the field->Frequently-used fields list. Set the condition to today. Dismissing all dialogs with ok will give you the Daily Task List :] - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
The ability to colorize tasks by category has to be the greatest thing ever. If you asked what feature I most wanted in Office let alone outlook it would be that.
Thank You!!! - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
I've been using Outlook 12 for a week now, and nothing in the world is going to get me to give it up. The new features for managing tasks is absolutely heaven. Marking emails for follow-up on a given day and being able to colorize it is very nice. - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
Good job on integrating Outlook with Project!
I'd like to see more attention given to the contact management peice of the software. You folks should pick up the book "Never Eat Alone"; the author talks a lot about maintaining relationships with personal contacts. I would like to see something like the CRM plugin for the rest of us to use in Outlook. There's really no rich way for me to manage relationships with my clients in a "non-sales focused" way (IE: I can't track who I haven't called or email in a month and have outlook remind me about this). The bits and peices are there (Look at Journal), they're just not tied together in a meaningful way.
Also, it would be nice if the notes area in outlook could be replaced with a series of notes that are time stamped. I find myself making notes about my contacts and I have to enter date information to manage my relationship with them. - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
I like OneNote's flagging feature. What makes it so good is that I can flag tasks within a context of memo. I think tasks being visible "in the context" is very important.
Given how I use Outlook daily, and given most of tasks would come from e-mail, I would like to press Ctrl+1 while reading someone's e-mail to create a new task. I would like the task to appear not only in the task pane, but also when I'm writing replies to the e-mail. If the task is done by the reply, I can click the check to mark the task as done.
Well, this might not be ideal, but I hope you get the idea. I like OneNote's way to create, view, and mark tasks, but it works only for a memo I write. I want to do the same thing against incoming e-mails, and I think that's where Outlook's should come in.
One more tiny thing I would like you to keep in mind. I use Outlook tasks as a tiny memo. I know it's not how it was intended, but tasks are the only item I can sync to my Pocket PC. Well, to be precise, memo is also sync'able, but it didn't sync as good as tasks do. Also with WM5 and Exchange SP2, task is now part of server sync, so my usage of tasks as memo would increase. I wish new improvements don't sacrifise that scenario. - Anonymous
December 05, 2005
Some nice improvements, but it leaves me a little underwhelmed. Task Management in Outlook requires some more basic improvements to enable the type of task management your shooting for (GTD, et al). Specifically missing are:
- a proper "Project" object, to which one should be able to associate taks (and probably contacts, mail messages, etc.); I understand from what I've read that Entourage has some of this; this, to me, is the single biggest shortcoming with Outlook's approach to more robust task management
- some relationships between tasks: order, dependancy (predecessors?)
- possibly some sort of sub-projects and/or sub-tasks - Anonymous
December 07, 2005
I also use a Franklin Covey planner and struggle a little to match the task pads. I don't like the "today" filter because it eliminates past due tasks.
To fix this, one of the things I found in customize views is the custom filter option. I created a new filter on the Due Date field with the criteria "on or before" and the vlaue Today(). This gives me all tasks that are due today or past due, matching what is in my planner. - Anonymous
December 09, 2005
I think that you will like the new To-Do Bar - overdue tasks automatically roll over today so nothing is ever lost. - Anonymous
December 16, 2005
I agree with David. I think users would greatly benefit from Outlook tasking if there were some way to create relationships between the tasks.
Our team is currently trying out an Outlook task manager called Add2Exchange for Tasks. The application syncs private and public task folders using Exchange. We have a total of 5 members on the team and previously never used Outlook for tasking because there was no ability for real-time collaboration. Add2Exchange allows us to synchronize our private task folders, so the progress/status on each project is kept up-to-date. For example, if I enter data into the notes of task1, Add2Exchange syncs the data with my team members’ private task folders.
We are extremely confident in this product, as we already use Add2Exchange for Calendars and Add2Exchange for Contacts religiously. - Anonymous
December 19, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
December 20, 2005
John, I think that you will find that the next version of Windows Mobile (already released), Office 12, and the next version of SharePoint will make you very happy. This release almost feels like it has been dedicated to tasks across the board and better integration.
-Melissa - Anonymous
December 21, 2005
I agree with the other comments about task relationships. This is such a basic concept. I gave up using Outlook tasks because I couldn't make subtasks. Just this one enhancement would greatly improve the usefulness of the product. - Anonymous
December 21, 2005
Until now, I think that people under-utilized the tasks function because this seemed to be the after-thought of the Outlook tools collection. Look at how Outlook presents itself by default. By default the calendar dominates screens where tasks are present. Right now it takes a lot more work to coax user-friendly presentation and use out of tasks than any of the other pieces.
Believe me, what you are saying is right. I feel the need to use tasks and the calendar together effectively. It's just hard to make that a reality. I am pleased to see what you have in store for us and can't wait to get my hands on it! - Anonymous
January 04, 2006
Tasks on the Calendar (time-based task management)
IMHO, there are new "bells and whistles". There is no real integration between Task and Calendar after 1994. - Anonymous
January 12, 2006
Great to hear about the improved focus on tasks. I've been using Franklin Covey for Outlook for years for one single feature: it lets you priortize your task list. Please consider including this in Outlook 12 (and Windows Mobile too). Thanks. - Anonymous
January 16, 2006
Put on my wishlist (if not yet available):
1. integartion between tasks in Visual Studio Team System and tasks in Outlook 12, so that they can be synchronized to a mobile for review. Inputting tasks in VSTS is too hard compared to what can be done now using GTD and OL 2003...
2. checkable synchronization options for the mobile: by list, by projects, by status... I want to archive all completed task for a review, but I don't need them all on the mobile device.
(so this adds the need for new properties to the so desired projects/subprojects)
3. separation of the input of a new task from the list of all (filtered) tasks on a mobile device. (Qtek 9100/ Windows Mobile 5). It takes too long before a new simple task/note can be added, because it has to wait too long before the full (or filtered) task list appears and that makes the use of tasks on the mobile almost useless. I want to add ideas/things/tasks when they come up and I don't want to loose them while waiting for the system...
4. integrate well with .net managed code and the time management functionality of OL12... lots of applications do need a kind of task and time management, which can be OL12 of course (why re-invent that specific wheel again) - Anonymous
January 28, 2006
Huge improvement in Task Management in Office 12 but I aggree strongly with one poster that a "Project" object is crying out for inclusion. I really like this feature in Entourage. Being able to see all data associated with a client is badly needed in Office/Outlook. - Anonymous
March 30, 2006
I beleive that this is a step in the right direction. I would like to to see a somewhat automatic approach to scheduling task similar to Taskline. simple plug in your tasks and it fills in where you have time to do them. I believe that and a better sync with mobile, simple project/task hirarchy views will make it a winner. - Anonymous
May 11, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
May 15, 2006
You need a way of undertanding both contexts and project. The existing "category" system is not flexible to handle this. I'm surprised you didn't get this from your research, it is a central tenant of modern productivity systems.
Example: I need to do task 1 on the phone, and task 2 on the net. They are both a part of a project called "research". I need to do task 3 on the phone and task 4 on the net. They are both a part of a project called "press release". Now I'm on my laptop, with my cell phone and no net connection with 30 minutes before my plane boards. How do I get a simple list of things I can do on the phone (tasks 1 and 3) instead of a list of tasks by project?
I hope Outlook 2007 addresses this - Anonymous
June 09, 2006
PingBack from http://www.blackbeltproductivity.net/blog/06-09-2006/the-evil-empire-is-listening/ - Anonymous
July 18, 2006
You have a single field called Priority... there should be 2 fields:
- Relevance (Important, Not Important)
- Urgency (Urgent, Routine)
And allow to sort by both criteria simultaneously.
Basic time management policy:
IU --> Focus in that do it now
IR --> Focus on that next
NU --> Delegate now to your assistant
NR --> Delegate later (or forget it ;-) ) - Anonymous
July 24, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
August 20, 2006
why not try this excellent task management software?
http://www.sharewarecheap.com/business-finance-project-management/vip-team-to-do-list11236-3.htm - Anonymous
August 17, 2007
uhmm.. .because it comes up to a blank page... that would be a reason I guess not to use it. What do you think?