Create New Tasks and Edit the Details

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About this lesson

Create a series of new tasks in the project plan and understand how to modify the details of existing tasks.

Quick reference

Create New Tasks and Edit the Details

Create new tasks in the plan and edit the tasks to add more detailed information. 

When to use

Every plan needs tasks. We can quickly add new tasks in the plan by providing some basic information about the task. 

Instructions

When we are looking at a plan in Board view, we can see default buckets. Buckets are a way to group and categorize tasks. The default bucket is labeled To do and unless we add other buckets, all new tasks will be assigned to this bucket. 

Add Tasks to the Plan

Tasks can be added quickly to the plan with basic details. 

  • Under the To do bucket, click + Add task. 
  • Enter a task name.
  • Click Set due date and pick a date from the calendar.  
  • Click Assign. 
  • Choose who to assign this task to from the list. 
  • Click Add task. 

The task is now added to the plan with basic information. Repeat this process to quickly populate the plan with tasks. 

Edit Task Details

We can add more information to our tasks by editing the details. 

  • Click on a task to open it. 

From here, we have many more fields we can complete. 

Assign: We can assign this task to someone else. 
Add label: Categorize tasks using colored labels.
Bucket: This field lets us assign the task to a specific bucket. 
Progress: We can change this to show the current progress of a task: Not started, In progress, or Complete. 
Priority: Set the priority for this task: Low, Medium, Important, or Urgent.
Start date: The start date of the task. 
Due date: The due date of the task.
Notes: Additional notes can be added in this section. We can choose to show the first few lines of the notes section on the card by selecting the Show on card checkbox. 
Checklist: Sometimes a task will have its own subtasks. We can add checklist items here that need to be completed before the overall task is considered complete. 
Attachments: We can add attachments to the task by selecting Add attachment. 
Comments: Comments act like conversations. We can type a comment and click the Send button and the comment is added to a conversation. We can see other people's comments much like a conversation in a Teams channel. 

Hints & tips

  • Tasks don't always have to be assigned to someone else. You can assign any task to yourself and view those tasks from the Hub in the Assigned to me section. 
  • Tasks by default are assigned a priority of Medium. 
  • We can only Show on card either the task notes or the checklist items, not both. 
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  • 00:04 So now that we've created our plan, we've added some members,
  • 00:08 it's time to start building our plan out by adding in some new tasks.
  • 00:12 And the tasks that I'm going to add you can find in that software development
  • 00:17 spreadsheet that I showed you earlier on in this section.
  • 00:20 So if you haven't downloaded that spreadsheet, then do that now.
  • 00:24 Alternatively, if you have your own project and
  • 00:26 your own tasks that you want to add, then that is absolutely fine too.
  • 00:30 Just know that if you're looking for ideas,
  • 00:33 you can use the software development plan as a guide.
  • 00:36 Now, when we're adding new tasks in Planner, we do this from Board view.
  • 00:40 And you can see right at the top here, this is where we switch between our
  • 00:43 different views, and I'm currently clicked on Board.
  • 00:46 Now, one thing to notice here is we have what we call buckets at the top.
  • 00:50 And I'm not going to go too much into this at the moment because we have a whole
  • 00:53 lesson dedicated to buckets a bit later on.
  • 00:56 But there will always be a default bucket where all of your tasks will live
  • 01:00 before you assign them to different buckets.
  • 01:03 And for us, that is the to do bucket just here.
  • 01:07 So as we go through adding tasks,
  • 01:09 all of our tasks are basically going to be in this bucket.
  • 01:12 Now, adding a task is really simple.
  • 01:15 You can see underneath we have an Add task button, but if I click this,
  • 01:19 it basically just toggles off or on that little dialog box underneath.
  • 01:24 So let's click to make sure we have that on, and
  • 01:27 here we can just enter the basic details of the task.
  • 01:30 Now, if we quickly refer to the Excel spreadsheet that we're going to be working
  • 01:34 from, you could see here that I have a little bit of a structure going on with
  • 01:38 these tasks.
  • 01:39 We have Software Development at the top here, that's in bold.
  • 01:43 We then have Scope also in bold, but that's indented.
  • 01:46 And then we have these tasks underneath.
  • 01:50 So when I'm thinking about how I'm going to organize these in Planner,
  • 01:54 I'm probably going to take these headings just here and
  • 01:57 use those as different buckets, and these are going to be my tasks.
  • 02:02 So the first task that we're going to add here is determine project scope.
  • 02:06 So let's type that in.
  • 02:07 I can then set a due date.
  • 02:10 Now, it might be at this stage you don't particularly know when that task is due,
  • 02:14 and that's absolutely fine, you don't have to add it in immediately.
  • 02:17 But let's click on Set due date and we can select something from the calendar.
  • 02:22 Now, let's say that this project starts in, let's go for February next year.
  • 02:28 So I'm going to say Determine Project Scope needs to be completed by Friday,
  • 02:32 February the 3rd, 2023.
  • 02:34 I can then choose if I want to assign this task to anyone in particular.
  • 02:40 So if I click on Assign, it's going to open up and
  • 02:42 show me all of the members of this project.
  • 02:45 So maybe this task needs to be completed by myself, but also Ben as well.
  • 02:50 Once I have those basic details in, I can simply click on Add task.
  • 02:54 Now, notice that I didn't add a great deal of information to that task,
  • 02:58 basically just the name, a due date and who it's assigned to.
  • 03:02 There is a lot more information that we can add in to every task we create in
  • 03:05 Planner.
  • 03:06 So if we want to add more information, we need to click on the task and
  • 03:10 then it opens up all of these different fields.
  • 03:13 Now, some of these we're going to go through in their own specific lessons, but
  • 03:17 I am going to change a couple of things in here.
  • 03:19 Now, the bucket I'm going to leave as is at the moment because we don't have any
  • 03:23 other buckets.
  • 03:24 The progress, well, this isn't started yet, so let's leave on not started.
  • 03:29 If we click the dropdown, you can see you have not started, in progress, or
  • 03:32 completed.
  • 03:33 I'm going to change the priority though, let's change that to important.
  • 03:37 The start date, well, let's set that.
  • 03:39 So it's due on February the 3rd, so
  • 03:42 I'm going to say that this needs to start on February the 1st.
  • 03:48 This task doesn't repeat.
  • 03:50 And then we have things that we can add, like any additional notes,
  • 03:54 we can add checklist items, which are like mini subtasks, and
  • 03:58 we can also add attachments and comments.
  • 04:00 As I said, we're going to get into this a bit more later on.
  • 04:04 At this stage, just be aware that once you've added those basic details,
  • 04:08 you can add more information simply by opening up the task.
  • 04:12 Let's click on Close to close that down.
  • 04:14 Now, you'll notice one small change here,
  • 04:17 I now have an exclamation point on this card.
  • 04:19 And that's what we call these, these are called cards in Microsoft Planner.
  • 04:23 And that is because I've set the priority of this particular task to important.
  • 04:28 So this is just really a visual indicator for me.
  • 04:31 Let's add in another task.
  • 04:34 I'm going to click the Add task button, and
  • 04:37 this one is Secure Project Sponsorship.
  • 04:40 I can set a due date in exactly the same way, so
  • 04:43 let's say this is due on the 10th of February.
  • 04:47 And I can assign that to other members of the team, so I'm going to say Jack and
  • 04:51 Olivia are responsible for this task.
  • 04:54 Let's add the task.
  • 04:55 And if we want to add more details, we can simply click to open it up, and
  • 05:00 I'm going to change this priority to important as well.
  • 05:03 And that is it at this stage.
  • 05:05 So a lot of the time I'll just go through, I'll add the bare bones of my tasks.
  • 05:10 And then as I get more information, I can always go back in and
  • 05:13 update things like start dates, finish dates, due dates, things like that.
  • 05:17 And of course, we need to keep going into our tasks to update things like progress
  • 05:22 so that everybody is aware how far through the project we actually are.
  • 05:26 But that's the basics of adding new tasks into your plan.
  • 05:30 I'm going to go away and I'm going to add in more tasks from our software
  • 05:33 development spreadsheet into Planner so
  • 05:36 that we have a few that we can practice and play around with.
  • 05:39 I'm going to do that off camera, and I will see you in the next lesson.

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