Forum Discussion
Introducing Steps in Microsoft To-Do
With Microsoft To-Do we wanted a fresh start to explore the positives of productivity. We were especially inspired by the sense of accomplishment that comes from completing your most important to-dos every day. Microsoft To-Do’s My Day frees you from the anxiety that accompanies an ever-growing to-do lists by resetting each morning so that you can prioritize your to-dos each day.
We love hearing how our customers use My Day to complete more of their to-dos each day. We’ve also heard your requests. Thanks to your feedback, we know that productivity doesn’t rest solely on a morning ritual of planning your day or end once you’ve completed your regular daily to-dos. Accomplishing larger goals requires effective tools to break those giant tasks down into more manageable bite-sized chunks.
With that in mind, we’re very happy to introduce you to Steps. Steps allows you to break any to-do down in to smaller pieces. No matter how monumental your to-do may be, you can tackle it easily, step by step.
Break your larger to-dos down in to your next steps.
We’ve found that the best strategy to accomplish larger goals is to create simple, specific and actionable steps. If you’re working through your list and come to a to-do that you simply can’t complete immediately, it’s the perfect opportunity to pause and evaluate your next steps. Thanks to this moment of reflection, prep for presentation becomes update PowerPoint with slides from analytics, review last month's meeting notes and share outline & agenda, all of which are clearly defined and achievable.
As you complete each Step of your goal, we’ll help keep track of your progress. Beneath your to-do’s name we’ll show you just how many Steps it contains and how many you’ve completed so far. You’ll always be able to see exactly how far you’ve come directly from your list. The number of Steps left to reach your goal is always visible, helping keep you on track, accountable and in control.
Get Microsoft To-Do Preview for iPhone, Android, Windows and the web today.
We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on what you think would make Microsoft To-Do even better. You can talk to us via our in-app contact form, on UserVoice, Twitter or on Facebook.
48 Replies
Hello Keturah,
For the last few months, I have started using MS To Do routinely and increasingly. I think that the "Steps" feature is valuable and entirely needed. However, it does little good if when looking at the task on the main list all one sees is a number for each hidden step. One should be able to see the steps and act on them. I would like to use this feature, but if they are essentially hidden without first opening the parent, I will probably just add each step as a new task. If you could show the tasks as dependent of the parent, but visible as individual tasks in their own right, it would be much better. Keturah Cummings
Keturah Cummings I am having issues with my To Do lists duplicating tasks that are already completed. It is also updating Tasks to the wrong dates, future dates, but days away. Even though the repeat is set to daily. Can you shed some insight on why this may be happening?
Keturah Cummings I'm new to To Do, but have probably used or tried dozens of TTD tools over the years. This is close - integration to outlook and onnote sealed it for me.
BUT - While Steps is a "step in the right direction" and certainly valuable for breaking down a task, it would be improved by the ability to "promote" a step to a task (while retaining connection to the original task) You can do this in Trello and, if memory serves, Planner. That way you can add the next step(s) to My Day, rather than adding a multi-day task to My Day only to do one or two of the steps.
Close to killer if you add this and a wonderful balance between the complexity of some tools and usability of a simple list.
Hi Adam_S17 To Do doesn't yet support printing, though it something we plan to introduce with upcoming releases.
- Keturah, you say in reply to Adam_S17 "Hi Adam_S17 To Do doesn't yet support printing, though it something we plan to introduce with upcoming releases. "
Could he print from the Outlook Tasks sync version, perhaps?
and few more ideas:
Ability to share individual To Do's and steps vs. only sharing lists
Ability to delegate To Do's and steps to people within organisation
Link and sync with Microsoft planner
thanks
Love the To do app but would like to see the following changes:
Syncing steps into outlook tasks (with the ability to see the steps in the task)
Due dates on steps (again sync'd with outlook)
Step dependencies
The ability to move a single step into my day to action
The ability to change the width of the List summary (ie where the steps, reminders, due date repeat and file section is) on windows desktop.
Ability to change the page/text (zoom) size of the To Do desktop page
Many thanks
Mike
great suggestions Mike_C1302
Mike_C1302 Due dates on steps and ability to add steps to My Day would be very helpful
Hi Katurah,
I've been struggling with a nasty 'bug' for the past few days. It seems that my 'Repeat' reminders have gone wacky. I get many copies in 'Today'. I delete them, and soon thereafter, they all re-appear.
I would be helpful to have a 'master list' of Repeating tasks so that I would find the origin and change/delete the repeat option. (I think that is on the To-do list.)
I finally just deleted every copy in the master Tasks list, and it seems to have stopped.
Hi Arnie, I'm really sorry to hear about that bug. Would you mind letting me know which device you were using and if you set those tasks to repeat directly within Microsoft To-Do or in Outlook Tasks? Thanks!
NOT Outlook tasks, but ToDo tasks.
Using both Windows desktop and Windows 10 phone.
Interestingly, I was able to stop the excessive repeats on the desktop yesterday by deleting every repeating entry in the Task list, but they still showed up on my phone for several hours. -not in Todo, but in Win10 Notifications.
It appears that now they have been killed off.
Love the feature, as it is often the case that one needs to break down bigger or recurrent tasks, and this way keeps everything well organized and sortable.
Unfortunately though I noticed an annoying bug in the browser version, where the steps fail to sync properly unless an action is taken on the task (like clicking the "Add to my day" button). This just makes the feature useless, as inconsistent info are shown. Hope the bug get fixed soon.
Thanks for the heads up on that. We'd like to investigate further. Would you mind telling me which browser you're using? If you could also share your session id, we'd be able to take a look from our end. From the web app, just click the settings cog icon in the top right > To-Do Settings > Copy Session ID.
I am new to using MS To-Do an overall I like it. I am coming from Google Keep and notice a few shortcomings, but with progressive posts like this, and an active support team like Keturah Cummings, I am growing to enjoy the use.
I was initially going to talk about the integration with Outlook, but you've already addressed it. I didn't see you pushing the desktop application...which might suffice for some people. I know you included it in the original post, but it was at the very end where people might've not read it. I just downloaded it and sure enough it shows the steps.
For those who want the desktop application, here is the link she provided. Note: When you click Get, it will open the MS Store on Windows 10. The MS Store will prompt that you need to login, but you don't...just continue downloading and installing.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-to-do-list-task-reminder/9nblggh5r558?rtc=1&activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Thank you, Keturah, for providing positive feedback to the community.
Being able to setup a "steps" template and assign to a type of task via flow would be a game changer for our business.
Would you mind giving us a few more details about how you envision the steps template working? Knowing the use-cases would be helpful for us in discussing the feature with the team. Thanks!
Keturah Cummings - I've noticed that Steps are not accessible on the Graph API and thus also not in Power Automate - the templating for new tasks could be easily achieved through Power Automate, with the added flexibility of being able to use it for many other use cases. I.e. I'm pulling in tasks from multiple sources every day (projects I'm working on from different tools: Jira, Confluence, daily recurring but dynamic task lists, Quire, Unanswered E-Mails from last Day) to create my personal list for the day.
While we're at it: Being able to add tasks directly to "Today" through Power Automate would be amazing too, e.g. set a Flag on Add To-Do (V3).
And in the vague hope that it's the same team responsible: Being able to filter if an E-Mail is in "focused" or not through Power Automate would be amazing too. (It's in Graph API as InferenceClassification accessible through $filter, but $filter is not exposed only $search in Get Email (v4)) - Thanks 🙂
