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About this lesson
Get help with your to-do list, assign tasks to your helpers, and use Task views to see their progress.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s exercise file.
6.02, Assign Tasks, Change View - Exercise file.docx129.6 KB
Quick reference
Assign Tasks, Change View
Tasks can be assigned to an assistant or co-worker via email, and an automated response keeps you updated on the status.
When to use
An assigned task is an automated feature of pure electronic communication. It begins with an email assignment, acceptance by the other person, and then an automated notification process updating you on the status.
Instructions
Assign tasks
- Create a new task and click Assign Task.
- The task screen becomes an email. Enter an email address and then click Send.
- The task arrives in the recipient’s inbox with a task icon.
- They will either Accept or Decline the task.
Change the view of the task window
- In the task view, choose View ribbon, click Change View.
- Choose from one of the many available views to find your preferred setting.
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- 00:04 Okay, let's go one step up with our tasks and that would be to assign tasks.
- 00:09 So I am in the task portion of Outlook.
- 00:13 So I've created a brand new task, need to order team reward gifts for
- 00:16 end of year, and then some ideas.
- 00:19 Well, I'm going to assign this to someone in my organization.
- 00:22 So this task has been opened, created, and
- 00:25 now I'm going to click the assign button up at the top.
- 00:30 I'm going to go ahead and type in an email address, And send this.
- 00:37 Now very quickly at the bottom, you're going to see this email go right out.
- 00:40 It doesn't wait for me to send it, it just shoots right out of my outbox, there.
- 00:46 In the meantime, I've got this all set up that I know I've got in my email,
- 00:51 a received task.
- 00:54 Okay, the task from my coworker just dropped in.
- 00:58 And notice this symbol right over here, it's obviously not an email.
- 01:01 It does have an attachment, meaning there must be something typed into the details.
- 01:07 When I click it wants to read it, I've got an accept or decline right over here.
- 01:11 Well, if it's from my boss, I'm not going to hit decline,
- 01:15 I'm going to hit accept, and it will immediately, send a response now or
- 01:19 allow me to edit the response.
- 01:21 So I'll click OK and you're going to see a send receive at the bottom of my screen.
- 01:27 There it goes.
- 01:29 See, the computers are communicating.
- 01:30 I'm going to Ctrl+4 to get back into my task.
- 01:36 Back on my task screen, I've got two of them in here.
- 01:39 The one I just send out need to order team rewards and
- 01:41 the one I received need to order catering.
- 01:44 Notice these symbols on the left-hand side.
- 01:47 The one with the little tiny person on it means I've assigned it to someone else.
- 01:51 The one with the checkmark and the green arrow means someone has assigned it to me.
- 01:56 So I'm going to double click the one that I received,
- 01:59 I'm going to look at all the details, and I'm going to notice it says, start date,
- 02:04 due date, status priority.
- 02:07 Well, okay, pretend I just got off the phone and
- 02:09 I've got all those requests going out so I'm marking this 50% complete.
- 02:15 I'm going to hit send status report and send, or just to save and close.
- 02:22 Okay, so I'm keeping the other person updated without bothering them,
- 02:26 calling them, interrupting them, the computers are communicating.
- 02:30 What happens if the other person is working on my task that I assigned?
- 02:34 I'm going to go check.
- 02:36 Jumping back to my email with a Ctrl+1, hitting my send-receive,
- 02:41 and as you can see, I've got communication happening.
- 02:46 The task I sent out was accepted, and they're working on it, and
- 02:50 a task report came in that it's 50% in progress.
- 02:54 Let's jump back to task with a Ctrl+4.
- 02:59 And notice I've got a lot happening on my task screen right now.
- 03:03 In order to manage this, we're going to look at the different views.
- 03:07 On my home ribbon, I've got a change view button, and I can actually just look at
- 03:13 the completed tasks or the active tasks, so anything that's been completed is off.
- 03:19 How about just the tasks that I've actually assigned to other people,
- 03:22 because you're going to forget looking at the list, which ones you assigned.
- 03:26 So having the view to be able to look at those is kind of great.
- 03:30 It's absolutely imperative that you know how to assign these tasks,
- 03:36 recognize the symbols.
- 03:37 You don't have to memorize the symbols but just recognize them, they mean something,
- 03:42 but changing the view is the ultimate sanity keeper.
- 03:46 All right, let's go on to the next lesson because I'm going to show you another
- 03:50 great view on tasks.
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