Manage projects and tasks in Microsoft Teams

Summary

Cathy Harley, a Program Manager, introduces tools for effective work management in Teams. She highlights how Planner, Project, and Teams can help teams collaborate and manage complex projects efficiently. Planner offers task cards, transparency, and accountability, while Project provides advanced scheduling and task dependencies tracking. Teams serves as a central hub for discussions and collaboration. Harley demonstrates creating plans, assigning tasks, and integrating with M365 Groups for streamlined sharing. She also showcases Project's timeline view and Roadmap for holistic planning, emphasizing how these tools can save time and enhance meaningful work.

Takeaways

• 😀 Cathy Harley, a Program Manager, introduces tools for managing work in Teams to increase productivity and focus on meaningful tasks.
• 📈 Studies reveal that information workers spend less than half their day on primary job duties, often due to meetings and interruptions.
• 🛠️ The tools discussed include Teams, Planner, and Project, which can be used collaboratively to manage work complexity and improve efficiency.
• 🔗 Teams serves as a central hub in M365, connecting everything and everyone in one place for discussions and collaboration.
• 📋 Planner allows for the creation of boards with task cards, promoting transparency and accountability within teams through features like files, checklists, and labels.
• 📊 Project offers advanced tools for staying organized and in control, including Dynamic Scheduling and custom data tasks, with the ability to create Power BI dashboards.
• 👥 M365 Groups facilitate sharing by allowing members to access all related projects, plans, documents, and Teams channels, simplifying the process of collaboration.
• 📝 Planner is ideal for tracking team ideas and goals, such as planning events, and can be integrated directly into Teams channels for easy access and updates.
• 📆 The schedule view in Planner helps visualize task timing and dependencies, allowing for better planning and coordination within a team.
• 🔍 Project is particularly useful for complex projects where tracking details and deadlines are critical, and it helps manage task dependencies and their impacts.
• 🗺️ The Roadmap tool in Project provides a holistic view of multiple projects, helping to identify potential risks or opportunities for collaboration across different work streams.

Q & A

What is the main focus of Cathy Harley's discussion?

Cathy Harley's discussion is focused on managing work in Teams using tools like Planner, Project, and Teams to collaborate effectively and manage work complexity.

What is the typical issue that information workers face in their daily work?

Information workers typically spend less than half of their day on their primary job duties, as they often get caught up in meetings, interruptions, approvals, status reporting, and understanding their priorities.

How does Planner contribute to team transparency and accountability?

Planner allows for the creation of boards with task cards assigned to team members, including files, checklists, labels, and more, which promotes transparency and accountability across the team.

What is the advantage of using M365 Groups for sharing in Project and Planner?

M365 Groups simplify sharing by allowing members to access all projects, plans, documents, and Teams channels associated with the group, eliminating the need to remember who to share with each time.

What is the primary use case for Planner mentioned in the script?

Planner is particularly useful for keeping track of ideas around a certain goal and turning those ideas into reality, such as planning a big team meeting or an event.

How does adding a Tasks Board to a Teams channel help with event planning?

Adding a Tasks Board to a Teams channel allows for the creation of a new plan or the addition of an existing one, ensuring that it is shared with every team member and facilitating collaboration on the event planning process.

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What is the benefit of using the schedule view in Planner for task organization?

The schedule view in Planner allows users to visually organize tasks on a calendar, making it easier to see when tasks are due and to adjust the timing of tasks as needed.

How does Project help with complex projects?

Project is useful for complex projects as it allows users to track dependencies between tasks, understand how changes to one task can impact others, and manage detailed schedules and deadlines.

What is the purpose of the Roadmap feature in Project?

The Roadmap feature in Project enables users to view multiple projects together, helping to understand the team's cumulative planning and identify any potential risks or opportunities for collaboration.

How does Teams help users stay updated with their tasks?

Once a planner board is added to Teams, users receive notifications when a task is assigned to them and can view all assigned work across all plans in the Tasks app within Teams, helping them to stay updated and focused.

What is the recommended next step for users looking to manage work with their team using these tools?

The recommended next step is to add a planner board or a project to any of their favorite channels in Teams and assign a task to a teammate to initiate the work process.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Introduction to Work Management with Teams

Cathy Harley, a Program Manager, introduces the topic of managing work in Teams. She discusses the common issue of information workers spending insufficient time on their primary job duties due to meetings, interruptions, and administrative tasks. To address this, she presents a solution involving collaboration with Planner, Project, and Teams to manage work effectively regardless of its complexity. The session will cover an introduction to the tools, the use of M365 groups for collaboration, best practices for using Planner and Project with Teams, and how Teams keeps work organized and up to date. Teams serves as a central hub for work in M365, connecting everything and everyone for discussions and collaboration. Planner offers task cards with various features to promote transparency and accountability. Project provides additional tools for focus, organization, and control, including Dynamic Scheduling and custom data integration with Power BI.

05:00

📋 Utilizing Planner and Project for Event Planning

The script explains how Planner can be used for team goal tracking and event planning, exemplified by the Green Team planning their annual Green Day event. The process involves adding a Tasks Board to a Teams channel, creating a new plan, and sharing it with the team. The speaker brainstorms topics and logistics, assigns tasks to team members, and shares resources like the previous year's schedule. Planner's due dates and schedule view are used to organize and visualize task timelines. The paragraph also touches on the use of Project for more complex projects, where tracking details and dependencies is crucial. The speaker demonstrates how to use Project's timeline view and dependency features to manage a market research project with complex dependencies.

10:01

🔍 Advanced Project Management with Roadmap

The speaker transitions to discussing the use of Project for complex projects and introduces Roadmap, a feature in Project that allows for the holistic view of multiple projects. The Roadmap tool is used to check cumulative planning and identify potential risks or opportunities for collaboration when projects overlap. The speaker shows how to use Roadmap to view the summary of all ongoing projects and to understand the team's planning for the year. The Roadmap feature is highlighted as a way to manage multiple projects and to stay in control of the team's workload.

15:02

🔔 Staying Updated and Organized with Notifications

The final paragraph focuses on the importance of staying updated and organized when managing multiple projects. The speaker explains how adding a planner board to Teams leads to notifications for assigned tasks, directing users to the tasks app where they can view and prioritize their work across all plans. The speaker also mentions the future integration of similar functionality into Project, allowing users to see notifications and tasks from across M365 in Teams. The paragraph concludes with an invitation for feedback to improve Teams as a platform for work management.

Keywords

💡Teams

Teams is a collaboration platform developed by Microsoft that integrates with other Microsoft 365 apps to facilitate communication and teamwork. In the video's context, Teams serves as the central hub for all work-related activities, enabling discussions and collaborations across different projects. It is used to manage tasks, share files, and keep track of projects, as demonstrated when Cathy Harley introduces how Planner and Project can be integrated with Teams for efficient work management.

💡Planner

Planner is a project management tool within the Microsoft 365 suite that allows users to create task boards, assign tasks to team members, and track progress with transparency and accountability. In the video, Cathy Harley uses Planner to create a new plan for collaboration, emphasizing its utility for organizing work and centralizing information, which helps teams spend less time searching for work and more time on meaningful tasks.

💡Project

Project is a more advanced project management tool that offers additional features on top of Planner's basic capabilities. It is designed to help teams stay organized and focused, especially when managing complex projects with critical deadlines. The video showcases how Project can be used to plan with Dynamic Scheduling, add custom data to tasks, and create dashboards in Power BI for visual tracking of project details.

💡M365 Groups

M365 Groups, or Microsoft 365 Groups, is a service that enables collaboration by allowing members to share resources like projects, plans, documents, and Teams channels. In the script, Cathy Harley explains that M365 Groups facilitate easy sharing by consolidating access to all team projects and plans, eliminating the need to remember who to share with each time and ensuring that everyone in the group has access.

💡Task Assignment

Task assignment is a process within project management tools like Planner and Project where tasks are delegated to specific team members. In the video, task assignment is illustrated when Cathy assigns a task to her coworker Nancy, showing how Planner notifies the user when a task is assigned and shares the plan with the assignee, streamlining collaboration and task management.

💡Dynamic Scheduling

Dynamic Scheduling is a feature in Project that allows for the automatic rescheduling of tasks and resources based on changes in the project timeline. The video mentions this feature as a powerful tool for planning when deadlines matter, enabling teams to adapt quickly to shifting priorities and maintain project momentum.

💡Dashboards in Power BI

Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft that provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities. In the context of the video, dashboards in Power BI are used to visually track project details that are critical to the team's success. This helps in maintaining oversight and control over complex projects by providing a clear, at-a-glance view of key performance indicators.

💡Roadmap

Roadmap is a feature in Project that allows users to view multiple projects together, providing a holistic view of a team's cumulative planning. The video script describes how Roadmap can help identify potential risks or opportunities for collaboration when multiple projects are happening simultaneously, aiding in strategic planning and resource allocation.

💡Notifications

Notifications in Teams are alerts that inform users about updates or actions related to their work, such as when a task is assigned to them. The video explains how, once a planner board is added to Teams, users receive notifications for assigned tasks, which helps them stay up to date with their responsibilities and prioritize their work effectively.

💡Collaboration

Collaboration is a key theme in the video, emphasizing the importance of teamwork and shared efforts in managing work efficiently. The video showcases how tools like Planner, Project, and Teams facilitate collaboration by centralizing communication, task assignments, and project tracking. The integration of these tools within Teams is highlighted as a way to enhance collaboration and ensure that team members can work together seamlessly.

Highlights

Cathy Harley introduces herself as a Program Manager on the team building Project and Planner.

Discusses the common issue of spending too much time managing work instead of focusing on primary job duties.

Introduces the collaboration tools Planner, Project, and Teams for efficient work management.

Teams serves as a central hub for all work in M365, connecting everything and everyone in one place.

Planner allows creating boards with task cards, promoting transparency and accountability.

Project offers advanced tools for staying organized and focused, especially with deadlines.

Dynamic Scheduling in Project helps in planning and managing task dependencies.

Custom data can be added to tasks in Project and visualized in Power BI dashboards.

M365 Groups facilitate sharing of projects, plans, documents, and Teams channels.

M365 Groups are flexible and can include people from across the company and guest users.

Different tools in M365 are best used depending on the complexity and nature of the work.

Planner is ideal for tracking ideas and turning them into reality, such as planning events.

Shows how to add a Tasks Board to a Teams channel for event planning.

Demonstrates assigning tasks in Planner and sharing documents from SharePoint.

Project is recommended for complex projects where tracking details and deadlines are crucial.

Timeline view in Project helps in visualizing the schedule of work over time.

Roadmap tool in Project allows viewing multiple projects together for a holistic view.

Notifications in Teams alert users when tasks are assigned, helping to stay updated.

Encourages feedback through the smiley face icon for continuous improvement of Teams.

Transcripts

(upbeat music)

- Hi there, I'm Cathy Harley and I'm a Program Manager

on the team that builds Project and Planner.

Today, I'm going to talk to you

about managing your work in Teams.

We constantly hear stories from people

about how they're spending way too much time

managing their work.

Studies show that information workers spend less than half

of their day on the primary duties of their job.

Instead, they're in meetings, responding to interruptions,

asking for and waiting on approvals,

gathering and reporting status

and understanding the best ways to meet their priorities.

Today, I'm going to show you how your team can collaborate

with Planner, Project, and Teams

so that you can manage work no matter what the complexity is

and spend more time doing work that's truly meaningful.

I'm going to start off by quickly

introducing you to our tools

then I'll show you how to collaborate using M365 roups.

We'll walk through best practices for how and when

to use Planner and Project with Teams

and finally, I'll show you how Teams can help you stay

up to date and organized with all of your work

and collaboration streams.

Now I'm going to jump right into our toolbox

and make sure that you're familiar

with the most important tools.

Teams has one hub for all of your work in M365.

It connects everything and everyone in one place

and it's the central location

for all discussion and collaboration.

In Planner, you can create boards using task cards

assigned to members of your team with files,

checklists, labels, and more that promote transparency

and accountability across your team.

Centralization of everything allows your team

to spend less time searching for work.

Project has additional tools on top of the basics in Planner

to help you and your team stay focused,

organized, and in control.

When deadlines matter, you can plan

with the power of Dynamic Scheduling.

You can add custom data to your tasks in Project

and create dashboards in Power BI

to visually track any details critical to your bottom line.

Now, team collaboration is so baked in

to the Project and Planner experience,

it's there as soon as you get started.

Here in Planner, I can go create a brand new plan.

I'll name it something fun like learning how to collaborate.

And right away, I have the option to add this

to an existing M365 Group that I'm a member of.

However, I'm actually going to go right ahead

and create a brand new plan for us,

which will also create a brand new M365 Group

for us to go work with.

Now, let's say right away,

I want to get started working with my teammate Nancy

and I have something very important for her to go work on.

Well, I can create this very important task.

I can click assign

and type my coworker's Nancy's name

into the task assignment.

Right here, I immediately see her

come up under a non-member.

So I can go click her name, and Planner lets me know

that Nancy isn't a member of the plan,

but that assigning a task to her will share the plan

with her and add her

to the group the plan's associated with.

I'm going to go ahead and do that.

Project and Planner both use M365 Groups for sharing.

Members of an M365 Group can access

all of the projects, plans, documents,

and Teams channels that are shared with the M365 group.

This makes things easy because you can just all of the plans

and projects your team is working on

with the same M365 Group

without having to remember exactly

who to share with each time.

No more typing in a huge list of names or even worse,

accidentally offending someone

because you forgot to type their name

into the shared dialogue.

M365 Groups are flexible

and they can contain people from all over your company

and even guest users.

Note that even the project requires an additional license

on top of M365 to edit,

everyone can view all projects in an M365 Group

that's shared with them.

I often hear questions from customers about how

and when they should be using different tools in M365.

While there's no one way to work,

I'll spend the next few minutes

walking through best practices.

Planner is really helpful when it comes to keeping track

of ideas on your team around a certain goal

and turning those ideas into a reality.

One example is planning a big team meeting or an event.

Let's say that the Green Team here

is ready to plan our annual Green Day event.

Now I want to make sure

that I plan this in the context of our meetings channel

where everyone on my team goes to for events anyway.

I can go add a new tab to this channel right here

and I can select add a Tasks Board to the channel.

When I go and add my Tasks Board,

I have the option to create a brand new plan

or I can add an existing plan

that's already been shared with my team.

I'm going to go and create a brand new one.

Call it Green Day

and I can be confident right away that this will get shared

with every single person on my team

so I don't have to worry about people being able to view it.

Now, once I go get started,

I want to just start brainstorming a little bit.

I know I spent a lot of time planning this event last year

so I know that we're going to have to come up with

topics to talk about on Green Day

and we're also going to have to come up with logistics.

In terms of topics,

I know that we're definitely going to want to talk about

carbon reductions and we're also probably

going to want to talk about composting best practices.

I'll let the rest of my team come in later

and brainstorm their ideas.

For logistics, I spent a ton of time

working on this last year

so I have a pretty good idea of what we'll want to do.

We're definitely going to need to build the events schedule,

we'll have to send out invites

and we'll need to prepare breakout rooms

especially because we're going to be remote this year.

Now, I was the head Schedule Builder last year

and I did a really good job

and I think I'm ready to pass off the torch

to someone new this year.

I want to make sure that I pick someone on my team

that'll really be successful.

I can go take a look

and under the task assignment actually browse

through my team members.

I think Jeremy would actually be a great fit for this

so I'm going to go assign the task to him.

Now, I want to make sure that Jeremy

is really prepared for this

so I want to give him some pro tips and a checklist.

Allow 15 minutes between sessions.

Make sure you end at 4:00 PM sharp

and definitely vary the topics by hours

that people stay interested.

Finally, I want to make sure

that Jeremy has the schedule that I built last year

as an example.

I'm pretty sure that this is shared to my team's SharePoint,

so I can go add the attachment here,

look on my team SharePoint and when I scroll down,

I actually find it right here, the 2020 Green Day schedule.

I can save this to the task

and I know that right now it's linked,

everyone on my team will be able to collaborate

on this document and it will be super easy to work together.

If this document was stored on my computer for some reason

and not already in my team's SharePoint,

when I want to go add an attachment,

it would just be a file

that would get uploaded to my team's SharePoint

and I know that everyone has access to the plan

would also have access to collaborate on the document.

Now I want to make sure that I go schedule

all of these tasks so that my team knows

about when they need to get done.

Now, Planner tasks have a due date

that I could just fill out,

but I'm someone that has trouble visualizing

exactly when to schedule things.

So what I prefer to do actually

is go to the schedule view.

Here in the schedule view,

I can go fast forward to April when we're actually

going to have our Green Day event,

let me just mark the calendar here, make it easy.

And I can actually just drag and drop my tasks

onto the calendar to make it really easy

to visualize when things need to get done.

So I know that invites probably need to be sent

two weeks before the event so boom, here we go.

Dragged and dropped.

Building out the schedule should happen

about a week in advance and preparing breakout rooms

should happen definitely just the day before

as things tend to change.

As you can see, when I go open the task,

the due date is automatically updated

for my entire team to see.

Now Planner is great for organizing a simple event

like this team event, but I know that we often have events

that are a little bit more complicated.

Project is a very helpful tool

when you're working on something that's more complex

or tracking details and deadlines matters.

Project can help you understand how changes

to one particular task impacts a chain of dependencies

down the line.

Now I'm going to show you a market research project

that my team has been working on.

This is something that has over six months of work

with pretty complex dependencies

and it's really critical that we make this work on time.

Project is a great place to track this.

Now immediately when I went and got into this Project,

I noticed that it looked like we were starting to fall

a little bit behind on some of our tasks.

It looks like things related to gathering requirements

and actually defining the project scope

look like they're starting to run late.

I don't know exactly what's happening on the team,

but I definitely want to check in.

I can open up the team chat right here

and I can tag my collaborator Nancy and ask her why things

look like they're running late right now.

My whole team will be able to look at the chat

in the same place and it's super contextual

which will help us stay focused on the task at hand.

Now the bread and butter of Project

is the timeline view.

In the timeline view, I can get a sense

of when the work on my team is scheduled to happen over time

which again is super valuable for any complex project.

Here, you can see that Project helps me track tasks

that are dependent on each other.

Let's say that I realize that this task here

actually can't start until I finish this one off.

I can simply go in and drag a dependency

right there

and automatically all of my tasks update, not just for me,

but for everyone I'm working with.

This makes things super easy

and saves me a ton of time making and communicating

all of these updates to the rest of my team.

Now, Project is fantastic

for really getting into the details of one big work stream.

But I know a lot of you work on multiple projects at once

and it's really important for you to get a view

of exactly what your team is working on holistically

rather than in just one work stream.

For that, we have a tool called Roadmap

which is another feature in Project

that lets you view multiple Projects together.

Here, I can go check on my team's cumulative planning

for the whole year, and I can open up my yearly planning

which is also just a tab in our Teams channel.

Here, this Roadmap is going to show a summary

of all of the projects going on on my team at the same time.

So here's the Market Research plan that we were just in

as well as our Marketing Campaign

and the compliance updates that we're working on.

The great thing about Roadmap is it can help me understand

if there might be additional risk

for multiple things happening at the same time

or maybe there's just an additional opportunity

for my team to collaborate when similar things

are going on around the same time.

Now I know that

working on a lot of things at once

can be especially challenging

and while getting a holistic view

of all of your projects is helpful for planning,

I know that it's important to have more power

to help you stay in sync on a day-to-day basis

and just feel more in control.

It can be challenging to stay on top of multiple projects

at once especially when they span different subjects

and teams of people.

We've built tools to help you stay up to date and focused.

Once a planner board is added to Teams,

you'll receive a notification

if a task is assigned to you by another person.

Following this notification brings you

to the tasks app in Teams where you can see

all of the work that's assigned to you

across all of your plans.

This is a great place to prioritize your work

across all of your planner boards for a given day or week.

In this view, you can also see a list

of all of your planner boards.

This is a helpful way to check in on your work once

without having to leave Teams

or navigate through different channels.

All of this functionality is coming to Project

as well in the future

so you'll be able to see notifications

and a list of your tasks from across M365

in a single place in Teams.

Now you have all the tools that you need to manage

any type of work with your team.

The next step is to actually get started

and the easiest way is to add a planner board or a project

to any of your favorite channels in Teams.

Then assign a task to one of your teammates to get started.

We'd love to hear your feedback and make sure

that Teams continues to be the best place

to manage your work

so please look for the little smiley face icon

in the upper right hand corner

of any of your apps and send us some feedback, thanks again.

(upbeat music)