everyone kevin here today i want to show you my favorite top 16 tips and tricks in microsoft to-do to-do is a phenomenal task tracking application and there are lots of hidden gems and features that i’m sure you haven’t seen before we’re gonna take a look at them today all right well why don’t we jump right on in if you’ve never used microsoft to do before and you’re interested in trying it out it is entirely free to use and you could pretty much get it on whatever device you happen to be on to get it on the web head to the website to do.microsoft.com and then click on get started to either sign in or set up a new free account you can also install the to do app on your pc simply open up the microsoft store and then search for to do lastly you could also get microsoft to do on either an android or an iphone simply open up the app store or the play store and there to search for microsoft to do and then go ahead and install it now that we have that out of the way and hopefully you have microsoft to do now on all of your different devices and that brings us to tip number one you can create recurring tasks right here on my task list i have one task to add more recipes to the kevincookiecompany.com website if you’ve ever been to our website before you’ve probably noticed that our recipe page is a little sparse and by sparse i mean we only have one recipe on there so i want to maybe add a new recipe let’s say once a week and i don’t want to come in and always have to create a new task every single week for myself to create a recurring task simply click on one of your tasks on the task list and that opens up this pane over on the right hand side over here we have lots of different controls but one of them is to set it to repeat let’s click on that this opens up a sub menu and i can choose how often i want this task to repeat i could have it go anywhere from daily and that might be a little bit aggressive i don’t want to sign up for doing a recipe every day all the way up to yearly if i don’t like any of these preset options i can also customize how often it repeats i think weekly feels like an appropriate cadence so let’s select that right up above i can see that to do set the due date to today this is the start of the week now i don’t want to have to sign up to have to do a recipe today instead why don’t we set this to tomorrow procrastinators unite tomorrow tip number two you can add steps to a task what does that mean well maybe you have a task that’s fairly complex and rather than just listing out the task on its own you want to include some sub steps at the kevin cookie company we have some fantastic products but we’re not getting enough sales one of my hunches is we just don’t have enough awareness so i figured the best way to do that is to run a super bowl commercial that’ll get us out in front of probably about 100 million people here i’m going to click to add a new task and this is for a super bowl commercial next i’ll click on add the task so it shows up on my task list now now of course running a super bowl commercial is fairly complex so i want to add some sub steps here i’ll click on the task and once again this opens up the pane over on the right hand side and here we see the option to add steps let’s click on this and add a few steps i’ve now entered each of my sub steps to make this happen and the neat thing is just like being able to complete an overall task i can come through and i can check off each one of the sub steps and the great news is i’ve already finished the first one i signed the contract now the next step is to raise six million to pay for the commercial maybe i should have put this first in the list because it seems like you probably need the money first well i guess i finished my first recipe for disaster this brings us to tip number three you can flag an email in microsoft outlook and that’ll automatically show up on your task list in to do and here let’s take a look at my email oh no it looks like adele one of my employees sent me an email telling me she wants to quit oh this might not be the best example for today i’m sorry this this has me a little shaken i should probably follow up on this over here there’s an ellipsis in the top right hand corner you can click on that to access more actions and on this menu there’s an option that says flag let me flag this and put it on my task list because i really need to follow up on this back in microsoft to do over on the left hand side i see flagged emails one of the categories when i click on this i can see the message that i just flagged in microsoft outlook over here i can then click to open this message in outlook one caveat to be able to see flagged messages you have to make sure it’s enabled in to do settings to check if it’s enabled go up to the settings gear in the top right hand corner go down to to do settings and if you scroll part of the way down you’ll see connected apps make sure that flagged email is toggled on tip number four and this is brand new functionality if you have an iphone you can use siri to automatically add a task to your task list with android this functionality is not yet there however it should be coming soon to take advantage of this up in the top left hand corner let’s click on your profile picture this opens up settings and within the settings menu click on the option that says siri shortcuts you have the option to add two different shortcuts you can use siri to add a new task and you can also ask siri to open a list of existing tasks i want to use siri to add a new task so i’ll click on this first option this opens up a screen where i can configure how i interact with siri first off i need to enter a phrase when i say this phrase siri will know that i want to add a task for this one i’ll say add to do now that i’ve typed in add to do next i need to indicate what action siri should take so let’s click on this option on the next screen i want siri to add a new task and over to the right of that i can indicate what list i want siri to add the task to when i click on this i can select another list i’m going to add it to tasks down below i also have the show more option when i click on this there are a number of other options i could select so when i’m adding a task do i want siri to add it to my day do i want siri to mark it as important and i can go through and set all these different settings for now all this looks good so i’m going to go back and next let’s click on add to siri now that i’ve added my task if i ever want to go back and say modify it or maybe change the location where the task is created i can open up the shortcuts app on my iphone up here if i click on the ellipsis this will allow me once again to modify all of the different settings now that i have the new shortcuts set up i want to add my first task so let me ask siri to do that add to do revisit benefits package here now on my pc i can see the task as well so i can add a task on my phone using siri and it’ll show up on the web it’ll show up in the app it’ll basically show up everywhere now i have a hunch that the reason adele wants to leave is because as part of our benefits we don’t offer enough free cookies i think if we up that a little bit we could really drive better employee retention tip number five any tasks assigned to you in planner automatically also show up in microsoft to do now i know adele uses to do quite a bit so here i am in my planner under our employee retention plan i want to add a task for adele to make sure she talks to me i want to present her with this new benefits plan where we offer more cookies to see if that sways her to stay i’ve added a new task and let me assign this to adele hopefully we do this before her last day i’ve added a doe in here and let me add the task perfect the task now shows up on my employee retention plan here now in adele’s view in to do over on the left hand side under assigned to you one new task is showing up and this is coming directly from planner one caveat to be able to take advantage of this you need to go up to the gear in the top right hand corner into settings next let’s click on to do settings and towards the bottom of the page you can indicate which apps are connected apps and you have to make sure you toggle on planner tip number six you can share to do lists with others and you can also assign tasks to others that way those tasks will show up in their microsoft to-do at the kevin cookie company we are launching a new york city location and there is a lot to get done and as the owner of the kevin cookie company i don’t think anyone expects me to do any of these instead i’m going to delegate it to one of my staff members to share a list over on the left hand side you can right click on one of your lists and you can then share the list also in the top right hand corner you can also click on share up here let’s click on share this opens up a prompt to share the list let’s click on create invitation link this shows me who currently has access and down below i can copy this link and then share it with someone in my organization i can invite via email or i could simply copy the link once i copy the link and share it with others i can also click on manage access here i can limit it to only those people who currently have access and i can even turn off sharing altogether if i no longer want people to have access to this list i’m gonna copy this link and share it with diego i think he’ll do a great job on many of these tasks i’ve now shared the list with diego and he accepted the invitation now in his microsoft to do over on the left hand side you can see the shared list new york city launch and here we see all of the different tasks if diego wants to share this list with additional people in our organization up in the top right hand corner you see this share icon if we click on this you can see who currently has access and he can then copy the link and invite others back in my view now that i’ve shared the list with diego i want to start assigning some of these tasks to him for example i think diego would do a great job at picking the uniforms here when i click on this option once again this opens up the pane over on the right hand side and there’s now an option to assign to when i click on this i can choose one of the members of this list and once again i think diego would do great at this so i’ll click on his name and he is now assigned to ordering uniforms back within diego’s view under order uniforms i can see that it’s currently assigned to diego also if diego goes over on the left hand side to assign to you here he could also see that order uniforms has been assigned to him tip number seven i can create groups of lists to organize my view even better down here you see all the different cities where we’re planning on opening the kevin cookie company and they all have to do with launches so i want to create a launch group and i’ll place all of these lists within that group to create a list let’s click on this icon down here and now i can title my group i’m going to call this launches once i finish typing in a name i can click on any list and i can then drag it within this group here now i have all of my different cities within the launches group here i can collapse the group and i can expand it so it helps organize my view a little bit better tip number eight any task that you create whether it’s on the web on your pc or on your phone show up on all of your other devices so far we’ve been using the web to create all of our tasks and here i am in the pc app and here i see all of those same tasks and here i am on my phone and here too we see all of the same tasks tip number nine you can also access all of your to-do’s from directly within microsoft teams over on the left navigation bar click on the ellipsis and either search for or navigate to tasks by planner and to do once you click on that here too you’ll see all of your to-do’s and here i’m back on the new york city launch and here i see all of the same to-do’s tip number 10 and this is a quick one anytime you add a task into microsoft to do it automatically syncs with the outlook desktop app within outlook click on the task icon in the bottom left hand corner and then here too you can see all of your tasks from directly within outlook the desktop app tip number eleven within outlook on the web you can very quickly review all of your tasks and you can also assign deadlines for your tasks using the new my day view to access the my day view let’s go to the top navigation bar and there’s an icon for my day when we click on this it’ll drop us on the calendar view first and here we get a quick preview of what’s coming up on our calendar to the right of that there’s another tab for to do when we click on this we’ll see all of our upcoming tasks and before i talk to adele i want to revisit the benefits package i can click on this task and i can drag it onto my calendar and this way i could assign some time to work on it so it’s very nice integration where you can drag and drop tasks between your to-do list and your calendar tip number 12 if you’ve ever wanted to see a smart list with all of your tasks and all of your completed tasks you can very easily turn that on let’s go up to the settings gear in the top right hand corner and then let’s click into to do settings within the settings prompt let’s scroll down the page to smart lists and here we can enable all and we can also enable completed now over on the left hand side i have a new list with all and this shows me all of my different tasks across all of my different lists right beneath that i have another list for completed and here i can see all of the different tasks that i’ve completed and i know i go on about me being management at the kevin cookie company but i actually do work as well i’m valuable my job’s important tip number 13 you can use the my day view to focus on what’s important let’s go up on the left hand side and click on my day with my day the nice thing here is you can build your list every single day at the end of the day the list will be flushed or cleaned out so every day you start with a clean slate this addresses the age-old problem of having a to-do list where you add a to-do item maybe you add another to-do item and your list keeps growing and growing and growing and at some point the list becomes so large that you’re just overwhelmed and you give up on using to-do lists with this it’ll clear it so every day you don’t feel overwhelmed and you can just focus on a few things each day now one problem is well what do you put on your my day view and that’s where to do has some really nice intelligence or smarts over on the right hand side you’ll see an icon for suggestions when you click on that that opens up a pane and here to do recommends different tasks to add to your my day view so here at the very top you can see to do is saying hey these tasks seem important and earlier we created this task around revisiting the benefits package that is pretty important so let me click on this plus icon and that’s now added it to my day also i have this super bowl commercial that i need to get started on so i’ll also add this to my day along with seeing tasks that are recommended to me from to do i can also see tasks that are coming up due soon and i could also see tasks that were recently added so all of this helps me focus on what’s important to me and it’ll help me compose a good and focused my day view tip number 14 i can use hashtags to more easily get back to tasks in the future and also to categorize my tasks here for instance i see my revisit benefits package task i’m going to double click on that and over here i’ll add a hashtag called employee retention this way i could very quickly get back to any tasks that have to do with employee retention now that i’ve entered this in i see the hashtag appear as part of the task name and it’s now a hyperlink when i click on this this will show me all of the different tasks that have that hashtag for employee retention tip number 15 you can turn on dark mode for the to do app on both your pc and on mobile it’ll inherit the os setting for dark mode to turn on dark mode let’s go down to our taskbar on the bottom and type in color settings let’s click on color settings from the best match within color settings you can choose your color here in this drop down list i’m going to select dark now that i’ve selected dark mode here you’ll see now that to do inherits that setting and dark mode is now turned on across all of these different screens this brings us to tip number 16. you can apply a variety of very rich themes to all of your different lists here in the top right hand corner i have an ellipsis when i click on that i can choose a color theme or i can also select a photo i’m going to select this photo of the beach once i pick that now when i look at my task list and i start to get stressed out all i have to remember to do is to glance down look at the beach and that’ll help calm me down again the nice thing is i can set a different theme for each one of these views so here i could go through and once again i can choose a different theme for these and last but not least it wouldn’t be a to-do app video unless i actually finished some to-do’s and with this super bowl commercial i’ve done quite a bit of work today and i think we’re looking good so let me close this out and we’ll get to hear that very satisfying ding yeah there it is all right if you learned some new tips or tricks today please give this video a thumbs up to see future videos like this make sure to hit that subscribe button also if you want to see me cover any other topics on this channel leave a note down below alright well that’s all i have for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye