Receive Email Updates on Tasks and Plans

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About this lesson

Modify settings to ensure updates are received when anything changes in tasks and plans.

Quick reference

Receive Email Updates on Tasks and Plans

Turn on notifications so we know when something has changed in the plan. 

When to use

We turn on notifications in Planner whenever we want to be notified that something has changed on the plan via email. This is particularly helpful if we don't have Planner open all day. 

Instructions

Access the Notifications Area

  • Open a Plan. 
  • Click the three dots at the top of the plan next to Schedule. 
  • Click Plan settings. 
  • Click the Notifications tab. 

Modify Notification Settings

The top section of Notification settings is where we manage our Group email settings. 

This setting can only be turned on by the group owner. As a group owner, you are the only one who gets to decide if all group members will receive an email when a task is assigned or completed. 

  • Check the box next to Send email to the group when a task is assigned or completed. 

The next section in notification settings controls the notifications that are sent to you. We can specify if we want to receive a notification when someone assigns a task to us and if a task assigned to us is late, due today, or due in the next 7 days. 

  • Check both boxes. 
  • Click Save. 

Receiving Notifications

We can quickly jump across to Outlook to check any notifications we have received from within Planner. 

  • Click the three dots at the top next to Schedule. 
  • Click Conversation. 

This will open Outlook Online and jump us straight to the group where we can see the email notification. Email notifications will contain a link back to the task in Planner.

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  • 00:04 When we're working in Planner, it's important to be able
  • 00:07 to stay on top of any changes that are occurring in our plan.
  • 00:11 This is particularly important if you don't spend all day in Planner.
  • 00:14 So maybe you don't have your plan open, but
  • 00:17 you still want to be informed if, for example, a task gets assigned to you.
  • 00:23 Well, this is where we can set up email notifications.
  • 00:26 And if you are the plan owner,
  • 00:27 you are going to be able to set up notifications for your group as well.
  • 00:31 So let's take a look at where we can find our email notification settings.
  • 00:36 So with Planner open,
  • 00:37 if you cast your eyes all the way over to the top right-hand corner.
  • 00:41 Notice we have a cog icon up here, and if we hover over, it says Settings.
  • 00:46 So let's click to open up this pane.
  • 00:49 So this is where we can come to change different settings within Planner.
  • 00:52 And if you take a look at the links that we have at the top,
  • 00:56 one of them is Notifications.
  • 00:58 Now we don't have a great deal of notifications that we can modify in here.
  • 01:02 So what we can do here is we can get Planner to send us an email
  • 01:06 notification if somebody assigns a task to us.
  • 01:09 So this is quite important if you want to be informed if a task gets assigned to
  • 01:14 you, then make sure that you have this option selected.
  • 01:17 And the second option here,
  • 01:19 is A task assigned to me is late due today or due in the next 7 days.
  • 01:25 So this second option really helps us keep on top of tasks that are already
  • 01:29 assigned to us but might be running late.
  • 01:31 They've gone past the due date or they're due very soon.
  • 01:35 Now, in general, I'd like to have both of these selected because I don't necessarily
  • 01:39 have Planner open all day.
  • 01:41 So having that little email prompt is really useful.
  • 01:44 And if you want to find out a little bit more about notifications,
  • 01:47 you can click on Learn more.
  • 01:49 Which is going to jump you across to the Help files where you can read a little bit
  • 01:52 more about these notifications.
  • 01:54 So I'm going to select both of these and let's click on Save.
  • 01:58 Now, there are some other group notifications that we can also set.
  • 02:02 So if we click the three dots at the top of our plan and jump into Plan settings,
  • 02:08 notice that we have a Notifications area over here as well.
  • 02:13 So let's click on this.
  • 02:14 You can see the bottom section are basically the notifications that we've
  • 02:18 already set.
  • 02:19 Those ones relate to how we're receiving notifications.
  • 02:22 But if you're the plan owner you have this additional section at the top here where
  • 02:27 you can adjust the Group email settings.
  • 02:30 So this is how members of this plan are going to be notified.
  • 02:34 And it's worth noting that you can only adjust this if you are the person who
  • 02:38 created the plan, so effectively the plan owner.
  • 02:40 So what I could do is select this option just here so
  • 02:43 that Planner sends an email to the group when a task is assigned or completed.
  • 02:48 And notice just above it says,
  • 02:50 Email is always sent to the group when a comment is made on a task.
  • 02:54 Now we haven't looked at comments yet but you can add comments to any task you like.
  • 02:59 So that is what this particular option is referring to.
  • 03:02 So I'm happy with those settings, I'm going to click Save.
  • 03:05 And let's just test that out to make sure it's working correctly.
  • 03:08 So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to open up this task and
  • 03:12 I'm going to assign it to me as well as Ben.
  • 03:16 So let's click on Close.
  • 03:18 And what I should find is that I receive an email notification that a task has
  • 03:22 been assigned to me.
  • 03:23 So I'm going to jump across to Outlook.
  • 03:25 Remember, the quickest way to do that is to click on the three dots and
  • 03:28 jump to Conversation.
  • 03:29 And you can see at the top there,
  • 03:30 there is an email message letting me know that this task has been assigned to me.
  • 03:34 I can click on the task to jump directly to it or I can reply in Microsoft Planner.

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