Forum Discussion

WillDeHaan's avatar
WillDeHaan
Brass Contributor
Apr 27, 2023
Solved

Microsoft To Do vs Outlook Tasks

Is Microsoft To Do replacing Outlook Tasks? Or how do they work together? Is Outlook Tasks being retired? I'm a Technology Adoption Analyst who co-leads our Champions program and we want to make sure...
  • HelloBenTeoh's avatar
    HelloBenTeoh
    Apr 30, 2023

    WillDeHaan hey, good questions

     

    Why are there 2 places for To Do tasks?

    Outlook tasks have been around for a long time and there would be users who still use it and the features are slightly different.

     

    Is there a best practice or best overall tool to use for this? Is To Do a better tool to push to our end users since it integrates with Planner and Teams and Outlook?

    I'd be promoting To Do for individuals. 

    • It has its own handy features (lists, grouped lists, smart lists, list sharing, tags, recognised dates, My Day etc)
    • It's integrated with Microsoft Teams
    • It surfaces your Planner items
    • It surfaces flagged emails
    • It has a dedicated app with mobile widgets
kimberlykimberly's avatar
kimberlykimberly
Brass Contributor
May 16, 2023
But you have to click on the link to see the email and it opens in (ahem) THE WEB BROWSER???? I mean...the mind boggles how that's an improvement. Also, you could previously right click on a task and easily had 20 options of functionality (including printing the email, changing the name of the task, color coding, finding similar emails, etc). Now, there are five, none of which go beyond just shuffling the items around to different lists. It's just laughably worse. If I were on the development team, I'd be embarrassed to roll that out.
HelloBenTeoh's avatar
HelloBenTeoh
Bronze Contributor
May 16, 2023

kimberlykimberly Hey, you're raising some interesting points here - I'd be keen to learn more because I need to have these conversations with others. How are you accessing Microsoft To Do (e.g. web/desktop app/Outlook/Teams)?

 

Looks like Outlook now has To Do included alongside tasks. It has all the features of the web and opens email tasks in the desktop app.

 

I also use the 'Planned' smart list a lot more than the My Day list. I've found it more manageable for seeing time-dependent tasks.

 

For your flagged emails, I still have the option in Outlook to assign custom dates. How are you seeing it?