A more productive Outlook
Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 07:52PM As I've discussed elsewhere, I am continually on the hunt for good productivity applications. Problems with recent versions of Microsoft Outlook have had me trying out alternative task list managers. None lived up to my expectations and I'd changed over my laptop at work so I decided to give Outlook Tasks another try. I got working productively, but as you will see below, it involves heavy infrastructure and a lot of configuration - and even then usability is still an issue.
Outlook Taskpad is unusable out of the boxOut of the box Outlook Taskpad is amazingly useless. It retains completed items forever so that your nice little to do list is quickly cluttered with things you've already done. The default sort is alphabetical (even after you set dates and priorities for things). The Simple List display doesn't show priorities or categories and the Detail List is cluttered with more information than anyone other than a project manager for NASA would need.
Outlook Taskpad can be configured in many waysFortunately, Outlook is highly configurable and I have worked out a view that works for me. Right-clicking on the Taskpad header and selecting Customize Current View brings up a dialog with many choices. The first thing is to filter out tasks that are completed. You might want to review completed tasks at some point (say when composing an update email for your team or your supervisor), but you don't want them cluttering up your list of things to do today.
Hiding completed tasks requires advanced configurationOutlook Filters include a blizzard of options but, frustratingly, the simple ability to hide completed tasks (at least when in the combined calendar-mini Taskpad view) requires you to go to the Advanced tab and filter out all tasks with a status not equal to "Complete." Given most users never configure their apps at all, never mind going to the Advanced tab, this is an unfathomable oversight.
My custom view is filtered, sorted, categorized and simpleAfter filtering out tasks I no longer need to do, I want to make sure I display only the information about each task that I need. Everything else is noise. The default display includes a useless "Task" icon, a checkbox for when you complete the task, the subject and Due Date. I change this to include (in this order) Priority, the checkbox, Subject and Status. Priority allows me to, well, prioritize. The checkbox and Subject are needed, of course.
I use Status as an indicator for items where I am waiting on someone else before I can take further action. I wish I could sort those items down to the bottom of the list or the category, but there is no option to do so. I used to make them low priority to accomplish something similar, but then I tended to forget about them. Another option is to give them a Start Date in the future and set a reminder for that date. Tasks with future Start Dates don't appear in this view so the Task will be hidden until it's needed. This is a nice way to set yourself a reminder to follow up with someone if some time has passed and you are still waiting on them.
Next I use Group By to display everything within Categories. I use categories named after products or projects I am managing. I also have a category for Personal Tasks and one for General Tasks that have to do with work. This option keeps related Tasks together. Categories themselves can only be sorted alphabetically, though, so I assign numbers to each to keep them in the order I want.
Finally, I set the view to Sort by Priority and then by due date. I don't display due date (even though Outlook suggests this) because I naturally set a high priority on things that are due soon and I tend not to go to the trouble of setting due dates on individual tasks. Others may find this more useful.
This view works well enough for me. I get a good feeling whenever I check off a completed task and watch the list get shorter. And Taskpad immediately answers the question of what to do next. I'm not always in front of my laptop, though, so I need ways to access my Task list elsewhere. There are tools for this, but none is very satisfactory.
Outlook Webmail is not configurableIf your company is hosting an Exchange server for email, they can set up a web interface that (if you use IE6 or 7) mimics the default Outlook interface. Unfortunately it is not configurable like the actual client, but for occasional access from an unfamiliar computer it is functional. This is just the sort of client-server and web interface combo I was complaining that many Web 2.0 solutions lack. It's just too bad you need an Exchange server and that the Web interface is so poor.
Basic Task access via BlackberryAnother potential "anywhere" access point is your smart phone. If your company has a Blackberry Enterprise Server, for instance, you can access your Outlook email, Notes, calendar and Tasks via your Blackberry. You can sort tasks by Priority, Status, Due Date or Subject. The Blackberry does at least hide completed Tasks, but the default view includes all Tasks from all Categories and this can be overwhelming.
Sort contacts by Category on your BlackberryWith a couple of clicks of the control wheel, you can filter the list to a single category. This is much more manageable and I find works well for a shopping or errand list. For quick reference applications like this, the Blackberry interface works well. It's accessible and it synchs with Outlook automatically. I wouldn't want to try to organize my Task list (something I try to do at least once a day) this way, though.
It's the best solution I've found, so I am using Outlook Tasks regularly these days. It's a lot of work, though, to get it working the way I like and I am completely dependent on the enterprise infrastructure of my company. If I were a humble consumer or had a company with less IT moxie, I doubt there would be a solution for me at all.
And even after my IT department has done its work and I my configurations, usability issues remain. Many people use their email in box as a sort of to do list. Some (like me) even use colored flags to prioritize them. This essentially means that I have 2 task lists, though, which is hard to manage mentally and in a practical sense means I end up answering email before I get to the things I really need to do. Web 2.0 solutions like GooTodo allow you to email a task to your list so you can get it out of your in box. I'd like to see Outlook add that kind of feature.
Jim McGowan's elegant little Mac tool, Do It, allows you to link a file or URL to any task rather than attaching it as in Outlook. This allows you to quickly find something you need to complete your task without moving it out of your file system. I like this simple app and it even uses .Mac to synch between multiple machines, but they have to be Macs and you have to register each one to start the syncing. It's strictly peer-to-peer and there is no Web interface. Perhaps the iPhone will someday have a task list widget that synchs with your Mac.
Bruce McCarthy
A Atkins posted that you can drag an email into your Tasks folder in Outlook and thereby convert the email into a task, a feature I wished for a couple of paragraphs above. I tried this and it works just as described. There are problems with the feature, though.
Creating a task from an email doesn't remove the email from your inbox. You can look at your Task list to see you need to answer the email but you still have to go find the email in your inbox to answer it. There is no linkage between the two and it doesn't help unclutter your inbox. If the email contains information you need to complete the Task then you have that and you can file or delete the email - it works for that use case - but if you need to reply to the original email it really just adds the overhead of having the reminder to answer the email in two places.
This is no worse than GooTodo, but it doesn't get us to where we need to be, to a really efficient way of processing email.
Reader Comments (18)
Maybe I'm unique, but most PIMs seem to combine tasks and calendar because they are both about what you need to do today.
http://www.prestonlee.com/archives/76
In my opinion it's much better than Outlook's task list, but you can say I'm biased :)
Ever so grateful you figured out how to hide completed tasks and so kind of you to share!
My remaining problem is how to hide tasks with a future Start Date....all of mine appear. I've configured my 2003 MS Outlook taskpad that way you did but future tasks & reminders still always show until completed. What am I doing wrong??? I really need a taskpad that makes sense and isn't overwhelmingly long. Can you help solve this? I want to start my day with a much shorter list and to have the satisfaction of making it shorter!
Barbara
Well, I'm at a loss, Barbara. Tasks with a start date later than today don't show up in my Taskpad and I can't find any settings that say to do that. It seems like that should be an out-of-the-box feature. (Of course there are many things that should be out-of-the-box with Outlook that aren't.)
Make sure that you are setting both the start and due dates. Make sure that the start date is not just later today. If that fails then your Outlook is doing something funky (which has happened to me).
You can go into the Advanced filters as I did above and create a filter that shows only items with a start date on or before today. You shouldn't have to do this but it will work. It would also be a good idea, though, to set up a filter to find all items where the start date does not exist. Otherwise the first filter will hide all items without a start date.
Good luck!
great post saved me a lot of time. good job, thanks!
im a fan of web based solutions. one good solution from this category is HyperOffice's<A HREF="http://www.hyperoffice.com/hypermain/Task_Manager.cfm">task manager. the good thing is that you can integrate and synch it with outlook tasks.
There is an easier way to hide tasks in the calendar view of outlook. When you open the calendar tab, you have a view of the calendar and of the Tasks due on each day...
To hide the completed tasks in the mini to do bar, all you have to do is go to: View > Daily Task List > Arrange By > Uncheck the "Show Completed Tasks" selection
Hi Nick, thanks for weighing in. You may be using a different version of Outlook. My company provides Outlook 2003 and this option doesn't appear.
Thanks for the tip on how to hide completed tasks in 2007.
Thanks alot for this tip. I stopped using Outlook also because I hated how it displays certain information, but I decided to try the program again, which my own customizations. I now see it's truly the way to use Outlook.
I just "refound" my preference after going to a new laptop.
While having the Calendar open and the mini task bar tothe right (or whereever) go to:
View>Task Pad View> Today's Tasks
This will show all overdue tasks,completed tasks for the current day and days where there are overdue tasks,and future tasks. It will not show completed tasks in the past other than days where there are still overdue tasks.
Good blog/site