Create and Sort Tasks into Buckets

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About this lesson

Sort a list of tasks into labelled buckets to add structure and organization to a plan.

Quick reference

Create and Sort Tasks into Buckets

Create buckets to organize and sort tasks. 

When to use

We create buckets whenever we want to organize our tasks and make them easier to find and manage. If we do not use buckets, tasks that we add to the plan will be in one, long list. If we have many tasks, scrolling up and down a long list to find the task of interest is not efficient. 

We can sort our tasks into custom buckets of our choosing. 

Instructions

The default bucket in Planner is To do. All new tasks will be assigned to this bucket by default. We can create our own custom buckets to organize and sort our tasks and even rename the To do bucket to something else. 

Rename a Bucket

  • Hover the mouse over the To do bucket. 
  • Click the three dots. 
  • Click Rename. 
  • Type a new name for the bucket. 
  • Press Enter. 

Delete a Bucket

  • Hover the mouse over the To do bucket. 
  • Click the three dots. 
  • Click Delete. 

Add a Bucket

  • Click Add new bucket. 
  • Type a Bucket name. 
  • Press Enter. 
  • Repeat this process to add more buckets. 

Sort Tasks into Buckets

We can move tasks into different buckets in two ways. The easiest method to use from Board view is drag and drop. Simply click on the task and drag it to the correct bucket to move it. 

Alternatively, we can click on a task to edit and change the bucket name from the drop-down menu. 

Group by 

The default grouping in Planner is to group by bucket. However, there are other buckets that are automatically generated by Planner that we can group by: Assigned to, Progress, Due date, Labels, and Priority.  

  • Click Group by in the top right-hand corner. 
  • Choose Assigned to. 

This will show all tasks grouped by whoever the task is assigned to. 

Filter by Bucket

We can also filter our tasks based on the bucket they are assigned to. 

  • Click Filter in the top right-hand corner. 
  • Scroll down and expand Bucket. 
  • Select a bucket to see all tasks assigned to that bucket only. 

Hints & tips

  • Deleting a bucket will delete all tasks assigned to that bucket so proceed with caution. It's much better to rename the bucket or move the tasks to another bucket before deleting. 
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  • 00:04 So now, I've been through, and
  • 00:05 I've added all of the tasks from the spreadsheet into the project plan.
  • 00:09 And as I mentioned, when you add your tasks,
  • 00:12 they all appear in the To do bucket, and you can see the To do label at the top.
  • 00:17 Now, currently, and particularly, if you have a very long list of tasks and
  • 00:22 we have a pretty substantial list just here,
  • 00:25 that makes your task quite hard to find and organize.
  • 00:28 So what you might want to do to arrange these a little bit better and
  • 00:32 make the things easier to find is to group them together into different buckets.
  • 00:37 And if you recall when we were looking at the software development spreadsheet a bit
  • 00:41 earlier on, we had different categories showing in bold.
  • 00:45 So that's exactly what we're going to do in this lesson.
  • 00:48 We're going to add some new buckets, and
  • 00:50 then we're going to move tasks from one bucket to another.
  • 00:53 After that, I'm also going to show you how you can add labels to your tasks as well.
  • 00:57 So let's start out dealing with the buckets.
  • 01:00 Now, the first thing to mention here is that this default bucket, To do,
  • 01:05 you can rename this bucket simply by clicking on the three dots, and
  • 01:09 we have a rename option just here.
  • 01:11 Now, it's entirely up to you if you want to rename that bucket, or
  • 01:15 if you want to keep it so that if you add any new tasks to the project plan,
  • 01:19 they'll go into that bucket and then you can decide what you want to do with them.
  • 01:23 So that's exactly what I'm going to do.
  • 01:25 I'm going to leave To do where it is, and
  • 01:27 I'm simply going to click on Add New Bucket.
  • 01:29 So my first bucket is going to be called scope.
  • 01:32 Simply type it in, press Enter, and you have a new bucket.
  • 01:37 Let's add another new bucket for analysis,
  • 01:41 another one for design, and I'm going to add six of these.
  • 01:46 We have one for development, one for testing, and
  • 01:51 the final bucket is training.
  • 01:54 So now, I have these different buckets,
  • 01:57 I can move my tasks from the To do bucket into the bucket that they relate to.
  • 02:01 So if I scroll all the way down to the bottom of this list,
  • 02:05 I'm going to find the tasks that I added in first.
  • 02:08 Now, these first few all relate to the scope of the project, so
  • 02:12 I want to move them into the Scope bucket.
  • 02:14 Now, there are a couple of different ways that I can do this.
  • 02:17 I can simply grab the card, click on it, and drag it over and
  • 02:22 drop it underneath Scope.
  • 02:24 Really nice and simple, so I can simply carry on just doing it that way.
  • 02:30 Alternatively, what we can do is click on the task to open it up, and
  • 02:35 we can assign it to a bucket from here.
  • 02:38 So now, you can see I have all of those buckets listed.
  • 02:41 I can choose Scope.
  • 02:43 And when I click the cross, it's going to move that across to the Scope bucket.
  • 02:47 So I'm going to go through the rest of these tasks that I have in To do just
  • 02:51 dragging and dropping them to the correct bucket.
  • 02:55 I'm going to do that off-camera, join me back here in a couple of moments.
  • 02:58 So now, I've organized all of my tasks into those different buckets.
  • 03:03 This is what my plan looks like.
  • 03:05 Remember, you can use that horizontal scroll bar at the bottom to
  • 03:09 scroll through to see all of those different buckets.
  • 03:12 So now, everything is a lot more organized.
  • 03:14 I don't just have all of my tasks on one big hard to manage list.
  • 03:18 And whilst we're on the topic, I will be able to search and find specific tasks.
  • 03:22 It's probably a good point in time to point out the filter option that we
  • 03:27 have in the top right-hand corner.
  • 03:30 If we're looking for specific tasks, we can click the Filter drop down, and
  • 03:34 we have lots of different filters that we can utilize.
  • 03:37 So we can filter for tasks that are late, or due today, or tomorrow, or this week.
  • 03:43 We can filter by priority.
  • 03:45 So if I'm only interested in seeing all of the tasks that have a priority of
  • 03:49 important, I can choose that option from there.
  • 03:52 I can also filter by bucket.
  • 03:55 So if I just want to see all of the tasks that are in the Scope bucket for
  • 04:00 example, I can select it.
  • 04:02 It gets rid of everything else, and
  • 04:04 I'm just seeing those tasks in that particular bucket.
  • 04:08 If we've applied a filter, and we want to clear it and put everything back,
  • 04:12 we just click the Filter dropdown again, and choose Clear at the top.
  • 04:16 And it's also worth noting that the default at the top here is to group our
  • 04:20 tasks by bucket.
  • 04:21 So that is why we're currently seeing all of the tasks grouped with those
  • 04:24 new buckets that we've added.
  • 04:26 However, if we click the drop down, that isn't the only option.
  • 04:29 I could group by priority.
  • 04:31 So now, it's going to group them based on which tasks are urgent,
  • 04:35 important, medium, or low.
  • 04:37 I'm going to switch this back to bucket, because in the next lesson,
  • 04:41 I'm going to show you how you can add color coded labels to your tasks.

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