To Do or Not To Do... That is the Question
That really is the quintessential question and it’s one that people have to answer multiple times each day. The ability to quickly mark items for follow-up, to have easily accessible ToDo lists and to have clear and useful views into deliverables is essential for effective time management and productivity. To this end, I’d like to share some of the significant investments we’ve made with Tasks and ToDos in Entourage 2008. Our work is by no means done – items like Task syncing with Exchange is definitely on our ToDo list but we hope you find the enhancements to Entourage 2008 as valuable as we do and that they go a long way in streamlining your day and making your time management and workflow that much more efficient.
First up is the concept of ToDos. We changed our approach to the flagging of messages and contacts – flagging these items now additionally classifies them as a ToDo. ToDos encapsulate the notion of time and include attributes such as a start date, due date and reminders. We felt that the ToDo concept made sense since a flagged message or contact is something you need to act on, something you need to do. ToDos are useful in a variety of situations. If you have to call a customer next Tuesday, you can easily flag the corresponding contact in your Address Book and set the due date for next Tuesday with a reminder for the day before. If you’re perusing your mail and need to re-read or reply to a message later on, you can flag the message and set the ToDo properties that are relevant for you.
ToDos are accompanied by infrastructure to help you organize, track and manage them effectively. The ToDos and Tasks views are integrated together resulting in a holistic view of your day and action items. I find this at-a-glance view super useful and use it frequently. I’ve also created custom views of Tasks and ToDos – these help me keep track of my work items in a way that’s manageable and compartmentalized.
Speaking of Tasks, Task creation is easier than ever before. We consider Tasks a first class citizen alongside Mail and Contacts. The ability to set due dates and reminders is integrated in the Task creation process, making the whole experience fast and seamless.
Tasks can be accessed from within the Calendar view as in Entourage’s earlier incarnation. However, the new filter options and the new Task creation bar afford greater flexibility and utility – I’ve often looked at the events on my calendar and remembered something I needed to follow up on. I find that instantaneously creating a Task from the Calendar view saves me valuable time.
We also have some cool integration of Tasks and ToDos with various other Mac Office 2008 apps. MyDay displays Tasks and ToDos which are associated with the particular day you’re viewing in MyDay. I can print out my day from MyDay and it lists not only my meetings but also all the deliverables which I need to get done on that particular day. Totally useful for times when I’m on the run. The integration with the Notebook Layout View in Mac Word 2008 is handy for situations when you’re jotting something down and know you’ll need to follow-up. Creating a Task on the fly and associating it with that document ensures that you’ll have a placeholder for tracking that item and also ensures that it won’t slip through the cracks.
Since we’re all about productivity, information management and making your life easier, I’d like to offer a couple of tips to help keep things sane. When you’re finished with a Task, mark it as complete. When you’re finished with a ToDo item, mark it as complete or unflag it. This may seem really minor, but believe me, it adds up. In our research, we’ve found that people don’t cultivate these habits and the end result is large and unwieldy Tasks and ToDo lists. It’s less distracting and much less taxing on the brain to deal with fewer items on your todo lists (you know you agree with me about that!) so try these tips out and see how you go!
As you might have read on recent blog posts, we’ve reached RTM and our launch at Macworld is fast approaching, so it’s only a matter of days before you’ll be able to explore Mac Office 2008 firsthand. And by taking advantage of the new features in Tasks and ToDos, we hope you’ll spend less time wondering whether To Do or not To Do and more time wondering what to do with all that free time :-) .
Sumitra Sujanani
Comments
Anonymous
January 08, 2008
I can't believe you feel confident using a statement like "significant changes in ToDo's" when you haven't even included the ability to sync them to Exchange. Mind telling us what your ToDo due date is for Exchange sync-ing? 2012, next version of Office?Anonymous
January 08, 2008
"Our work is by no means done – items like Task syncing with Exchange is definitely on our ToDo list..." Sounds like it's not happening this time around, then. Shame. You do realise that this highly reduces the usefullness in a business environment? It doesn't matter how much better Entourage handles Tasks inside itself, if I can't see my Outlook/Exchange tasks when I use the office Mac then it's useless. When we upgrade it to Office 2008, all of the improvements will be 100% unnoticed by me, as they'll be in a function I can't even use. And I'm sure I'm not alone.Anonymous
January 08, 2008
I can't believe that to-do's still won't sync with Exchange. This is incredibly disappointing, given that we've waited four years for this update.Anonymous
January 08, 2008
Question.. what about links to contacts for To Do's and for Calendar events? The linking function was poor under vs 2004 and if you had to rebuild, you would loose all links. Is linking better under 2008?Anonymous
January 08, 2008
Hope your team could launch Chinese Version...Anonymous
January 08, 2008
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January 08, 2008
Will you launch other launguege version? Such as Chinese? Thanks!Anonymous
January 08, 2008
Hi everyone, I hope when you release in 2012 year another version of office for mac that this version would have essential feature for corporate exchange user. Until than we must use this version because (for now) we don't have much of option. I think user which are independent of exchange environment don't use office for mac because they have much better option. I was hoping for feature which outlook user have for 7 years and still hoping. TomislavAnonymous
January 08, 2008
It isn't clear to me after reading this post what the difference is. They seem like the same thing to me. Why do we need two types of these items?Anonymous
January 08, 2008
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January 08, 2008
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January 08, 2008
If I can't sync tasks to the Exchange Server then it means that I will still need to use Outlook in Parallels to get the job done on my Mac. That also means that I will likely not be purchasing 2008 when it comes out. I think the flood of disappointed comments on this page should indicate to you how important FULL exchange support it. Full support means being able to do everything one can with Outlook running in Parallels in Entourage. Outlook Tasks are a critical part of my workflow. I will often times delegate assignments using by creating a task and then assigning it to someone. Because it also leaves a small footprint in my Outlook, I have something to remind me to follow up with that person to see if they have completed the task. Once they have completed the task, I get an alert and then it is crossed off my list as well. This is a critical workflow and I can't live without it. Please finish off the features of Entourage which will allow it to have FULL Exchange support. You guys are smart, you've had a few weeks since RTM. I'm sure you can do it and have it ready for us by Macworld!! :)Anonymous
January 08, 2008
@Andy - Same here. As long as Exchange sync is not done, I will stay with Office 2004. "ask syncing with Exchange is definitely on our ToDo list..." As an update to 2008 or with with the next Office?Anonymous
January 08, 2008
ToDos (the flags on messages and contacts) have start and due dates WILL synchronize with Exchange and Outlook. Tasks do not sync with Exchange. @Michael P. Schnabel - we changed the rebuild process for the database to no recover significantly more data including existing links, categories, project assignments, etc.Anonymous
January 09, 2008
Wow... I dont understand why you dont get this... we are not looking to get this look pretty... need to be able to sync with exchange... that was the only important thing I was really looking for on this release. I am amazed that you can get away with not putting it on there.Anonymous
January 09, 2008
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January 09, 2008
"Tasks do not sync with Exchange" This is a dangerous to reveal just before the product hits availability. Ticking off potential customers at this point means you run the risk of people being very disenchanted when they may otherwise be buying the product - as the annoyance (and feeling of betrayal) is very fresh. If this information had been made available (say, for existance, when people were clamouring for it last summer...) then people would be resigned to the lack of functionality by now and maybe more prepared to do without it. Revealing it at this late stage, it's just annoying. Anybody not already covered by a volume licensing agreement, and who doesn't need much in the way of DOCX compatibility, may well be looking at holding off on getting Office 2008 - or avoiding it entirely.Anonymous
January 09, 2008
I just lost all of my To Dos because they weren't synced to Exchange. Now I have to restore them from a backup. Without Exchange synchronization, To Do's are almost worthless. Any "enhancements" besides Exchange sync are wasted effort on the part of the MacBU.Anonymous
January 09, 2008
At the risk of simply echoing most of the other comments, any feature that does not sync with Exchange is WORTHLESS. Your team simply seems to have ZERO comprehension about how huge this ability is to the WHOLE user sphere. You are sat on the verge of letting hundreds of thousands of people use their OS of choice in a productive manner every day. PLEASE please please get this right and get proper full MAPI support into Entourage.Anonymous
January 09, 2008
No Exchange task sync kills this release for me too. :(Anonymous
January 10, 2008
Fwiw, I’m an Exchange user as well as an Entourage user, and I could personally care less about task sync. The only reasons I’d want task sync support is to get tasks that other people assign to me (which no one does in my organization, from what I can tell, even if they’re on Outlook) and to have my tasks, which I manage in other applications on my Mac (think Sync Services or the Calendar Store in Leopard, with applications like Life Balance, Things, or OmniFocus), be in my Exchange mailbox. I think it’s safe to say that of the intersection of Entourage/Mac and Exchange users, only a subset use tasks. I don’t know how large that subset is — it could be 10% or 90%. Granted, if you are one of those people and you don’t even have the possibility of using them with Exchange, I feel your pain. One problem I see with tasks (somewhat like calendaring) is that it is a very personal activity. Many people use and benefit from different styles of organizing their calendar and tasks, so I’d want Entourage’s support to be as generic and flexible as possible. That way, I can use the to-do app that makes the most sense to me personally, yet I’d still like the other benefits of my tasks on Exchange for collaboration purposes.Anonymous
January 10, 2008
I'll be giving my money to someone else.Anonymous
January 10, 2008
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January 10, 2008
At least my corporate Outlook web access, when used from a Mac, properly alerts me that I'm a 2nd class citizen. It reports, "Outlook Web Access Light". Entourage should be renamed to Outlook Light, and for that matter, the rest of this office suite for Mac needs the same name change.Anonymous
January 11, 2008
When we are paying PREMIUM for Office 2008 WITH Exchange support we should expect no less than FULL EXCHANGE compatibility (at the very least Tasks and To Do syncing)!!! This just have to be included in updates to 2008. Remember that Exchange support increased much in Office 2004 during it´s lifetime (11.2 and 11.3) - there is no excuse not to fix this soon with a update...!!! I can not see any other reason for leaving this out than a M$ corporate decision in an attempt to keep the Mac out of corporate environments. Vista disaster, Mac gaining market share, HD-DVD dying and Apple´s unbelievable turnaround (doomed by everyone except us old Mac users - now watched by everyone) with a very good start to this millennia with Mac OS X, iPod, Intel transition and last but not least the iPhone. No wonder M$ is trying to FUD their way back in into consumers minds and above all corporate structures. Just my to 2 centsAnonymous
January 11, 2008
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January 12, 2008
What about syncing task/to-do list items with iCal? If I don't have a way of getting them to my iPhone, I won't use them.Anonymous
January 12, 2008
As an additional note, when Exchange support is finally added, please don't make it Exchange 2007 only. I really don't want to be in the unenviable position of having to upgrade a perfectly fine production server to satisfy a few Mac users. That would be just as useless as having no support at all.Anonymous
January 12, 2008
Just adding my voice to the cries of "What gives?" with no task syncing. Yet again, MS over-promises and under-delivers. We were promised Exchange support in Office 2008, and this blog reveals feature after feature that won't be available. Why should I buy Office 2008 when Exchange support is all I really want. This is yet another example of MS providing a software update that doesn't provide nearly enough value-added for the cost (CRM 4.0 might be an exception...)Anonymous
January 13, 2008
What level of Exchange Support is available in the version of Office "with Exchange support"? I just ask because I don't want to pay a whole lot of extra money when Exchange support continues to be <i>massively</i> limited. I still really want to know how you justify asking people to spend upwards of £200 for this release, which is essentially improvementless. Get ready to bury your heads in the sand, Microsoft, cos we ain't gonna love this release.Anonymous
January 13, 2008
Well, I was really excited about Mac Office 2008 a couple of months ago, but then I had to replace my iMac and since Office 2004 was not a universal application, I did not install it on a new machine. Instead I installed iWord 08, and during these 2 months I've grown up with that software so much, that I no longer need Office 2008. If you had come up with this release a bit sooner, you would have saved one of your costomers. Anyway, nice to see it finally shipping. Maybe I'll consider it again in next release (Office 2012??)Anonymous
January 13, 2008
very sad, we are migrating off of exchange because of poor mac/nix supportAnonymous
January 13, 2008
When will be released new messenger:mac 7 ??Anonymous
January 14, 2008
Regarding Eric's question of syncing with iCal and ultimately the iPhone, you can already do that with the past several updates to Entourage 2004. Prefs -> Sync Services -> Sync with Address Book and Sync with iCal. There are a few caveats, such as event categories not translating into multiple iCal calendars, but as a whole it works fine. I have a niggle with Entourage that I hope is fixed: have you enabled Left-Right scrolling a la Mighty Mouse in the Entourage preview pane? When I get a wide HTML message in 2004, I have to use the scroll bars to go left and right ... rolling the ball sideways only goes up and down.Anonymous
January 14, 2008
Re: Eric again I see now that you were specifically asking about syncing tasks and to-dos to iCal, not events. Even if these could sync between Entourage 2008 and iCal, Apple still doesn't sync to-dos on your iPhone ... even if you make them in iCal or Mail. That's a downfall in Apple's design, not Microsoft's.Anonymous
January 14, 2008
There are two things people wanted out of Office 2008: -Universal Binaries -Better Exchange/Office 2007 integration We are not getting real exchange support and we're losing macro compatibility, so the only real reason to upgrade is increased speed on Intel machines. Not very compelling, especially with Pages/Keynote/Numbers/Mail rapidly gaining ground.Anonymous
January 15, 2008
Well done to the Microsoft team in shipping (what we hope and from what weve heard) is an excellent Office product for the Mac. You guys had a lot of work to do to pull this off -- switching your codebase to XCode and upgrading to the new Office functionality. Really looking forward to it.
- Im sure you guys will get on with the To Do/Task synch updates in a service pack update?
- Also, i hope you respect the Mac platform, and integrate Calendar/Tasks with iCal also. thanks.
Anonymous
January 15, 2008
Entourage is a far cooler name than outlook right? (hehe) Well, entourage has helped me a lot in my work. It served as my main organizer and my PDA as a secondary because I spend more time in my desk than on the field. Having a great program for organizing my life such as this is an essential tool to keep me on track. I am surprised that you guys thought of something to add in your already great product. Thanks and good luck on your launch for office 2008!Anonymous
January 15, 2008
IS there anyone out there that is really surprised that Entourage is continuing to languish in terms of Exchange support? We have been asking for it for years and all the MBU can offer up is: "the Chewbacca Defense..." In other words inane/unrelated/useless bits of technology that have nothing to do with what we are asking for...Anonymous
January 16, 2008
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January 16, 2008
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January 16, 2008
Just read this AFTER purchasing... Looking forward to taking this useless product back. Thanks again, Microsoft.Anonymous
January 16, 2008
I have waited with apparently everyone else here for YEARS just to get TASKS and NOTES synching with our exchange server. Who on earth are you people talking to about features?? 99% of everyone that is a licensee of Office 2004 complains about the same thing...NO EXCHANGE SYNC. They have been doing 100% exchange sync on a Blackberry (wirelessly at that) for years now. This is simply disgusting. An expensive, yet worthless (and pointless) upgrade.Anonymous
January 17, 2008
It is hard to believe not including full exchange syncing for tasks etc is an accident. It is obviously commercially foolish - it was clear this was a must have for users. So why not include this functionality. If at all possible, make an updgrade release to address this. Until then it is not worth the money.Anonymous
January 17, 2008
I just installed 2008. Tasks are absolutely useless until they sync with Exchange. Another example of Microsoft's incompetence.Anonymous
January 19, 2008
Once again, ill add my vote. Better Exchange support, not prettier UI's please!Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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January 22, 2008
Very nice UI changes, but also TOTALLY USELESS. I have multiple computers (home, work, and laptop) and need to SYNC my TO DO's to get them on the computer wherever I am (or to access them via Outlook Web Access). It's maddening that tasks / TO DO's do not sync with Exchange! This is a critical error, and needs to be corrected AT ONCE. Unfortunately, when I went to Macworld, the team there had no workaround or way I could sync tasks. This is a MAJOR omission and renders the tasks completely useless. What good is it for me to put in tasks at work, then find I cannot access them at home or via a web browser while on the road? Ugh. Please, don't pretend you made something nice here. RULE # 1: I must have all my data accessible, from anywhere, at anytime. Putting features in that create local data that does not sync is rubbish. Please fix this ASAP, Microsoft. This is really critical!Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I completely agree with Dude's comments above. Needless to say Microsoft's silence on this matter speaks volumes. Microsoft, please prove us wrong--explain to us why you did what you did. Otherwise, it just seems that you used the previous 4 years to move to Intel (other companies with products just as large did it in half the time) and gave us lots of new UI with a feature parity list (with WinOffice) that has holes you could drive a semi-truck through.Anonymous
January 25, 2008
I don't get it. Entourage 2004 already has the ability to link Tasks to Contacts, Notes and Email. Why would you create a new field called a "To Do" to replicate this? And To Do's will sync with Exchange but Tasks will not??? Are you planning on phasing out "Tasks"? Can we expect a Service Pack that will add Exchange support for tasks? -AdamAnonymous
January 30, 2008
But Hey We Got "My Day" WOOOOHOOOO Now my day is complete <pun intended>....Anonymous
January 31, 2008
No TODO syncing with exchange, means my smartphone won't get my TODO list, which is indeed very disappointing. By all means, this version of Office is really better than the previous that, and I give you credit for that. But come on, either I have missed something, I'd rather have a simple TODO list with synchronization rather than a super system like this one without synchronization. Synchro also means backup to me, and I don't want to take the risk EVER to loose my TODO list. Happened once, never again!Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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February 19, 2008
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March 04, 2008
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April 04, 2008
Not being able to assign tasks is a serious oversight. Its a good product BUT corprate users need this function. It is a dealbreaker. It's like a Mercedez needing not having windshield wipers. How can you overlook something this essential and basic.