Give me your best scenario

Hey you! I am looking for some good scenarios around lightweight project management (hierarchical task lists, sub tasks, dependent tasks, etc – you choose.) Please help me help you by adding a comment on this blog with your best lightweight project management scenario that you feel isn’t well supported in Outlook as it is now (Outlook 2007 B2TR or earlier.) And of course, let me know which features you feel are missing. For example, if you want “sub tasks,” let me know and elaborate on what you mean.

 

https://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/01/13/512780.aspx

https://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/01/26/518104.aspx

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2006
  To get the ball rolling, I thought I would be the first to put an example out there. Here is an example of a hierarchical list that isn’t easy to do in Outlook: []Shopping      []Grocery Store           []Milk           []OJ           []Chocolate           []Dinner      []Pharmacy           []Pick up prescription           []Vacuum bags      []Video Store           []Drop off Videos           []Rent season 1 of the Office -Melissa

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2006
  a task that i would like supported are events. I know there are things like appointments that could take its place but i dont want to be alerted for these things because they are events. Also, sometimes i mark up emails that are related to events or tasks that i have. Another thing. is there a way to add task and appointment. i think they are the same thing.

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2006
  Two things, Timer tasks & follow-me tasks. So if I have a task, I may want to track exactly how much time I spend on that task. Writing a web page, a blog post, a book, etc. I need to track where my time is being spent (GTD, 7 habits, etc) Follow-me tasks that are interoperable with other things...I want to publish my tasks so I can login to IM from home, to a browser at the library, to outlook at work, or to outlook at home (that is connected to different e-mail servers) and get the same tasks (and same calendar). Add this to the follow-me tasks and one could really add value to their own effectiveness with little effort :)

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2006
  My Personal Project Management with Outlook =========================================== I have many projects in my life.  Examples from the past included small projects like "go to the dentist" and large projects like "Organize wedding". "Going to the dentist" (phone to get an appointment, figure out which trams and busses to take, then go to the appointment) is the kind of project that can be done adequately in outlook as it is. "Organize wedding" is of course quite something else.  It's a projects that has many, many aspects (note that I'm avoiding "subprojects/subtasks" here).  Every aspect can be quite complex as well. I see two ways to extend outlook to be able to keep track of such a project.

1. Tasks and subtasks

---

This is the version that probably springs to mind first.  Define a main task "Organize wedding", define subtasks for "Mass", "booklet", "feast", "invitations", etc.  For each of those subtasks, define more subtasks that are the tangible steps to be done. Each tangible task has a "percent done" field, and the value for the "percent done" field of the subtask is calculated by averaging the percentages of the tangible task.  The percentage of the main task is calculated by averaging the percentage of the subtasks.  It would be nice to have a graphical representation of those percentages, like a progress bar. This is very similar to the definition of tasks in MS Project.  Since this is a Personal project management thing, we don't need all the scheduling capabilities and the like of MS Project. To summarize: we have "Main tasks", "Subtasks" and "tangible tasks", or three levels of tasks.  I think three levels is enough, but I wouldn't object to more levels.  Only two levels would definitely be too few for large projects like a wedding. 2) Categories

I could use categories for projects.  However, if I'm also using categories for "type of action", we have an overloaded entity, which makes things difficult.  Now, If I want to group all my tasks according to the categories, I'll end up with groups that represents "tasks that belong to a project" and groups that represent "tasks that require a type of action".  I would of course like to define a view that gives me only the groups that represent tasks that belong to a project, and another view that gives me only the groups that represent tasks that require a type of action. To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to define those views in outlook as it is.  I can define "group by category", and I can filter that tasks that will be displayed.  What I cannot do is "filter the categories that will be used for grouping". To summarize: for this approach, we would need the ability to filter the items/categories that will be used for grouping tasks.

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2006
  I have lots of tasks that have a dependency on a location.  For example, "Take out the Trash" needs to be done when I'm at home, and "Stop by boss's office" needs to be done when I'm at work. I'd love if I could set up my tasks to notify/remind me when I'm in the correct location, so if I log on from home, I see the home tasks, and if I log on from work, I get an alert about the work tasks.

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2006
  I want a master task and then a set of sub tasks.  Each task can have a duration, but I want to define a sequence and then trigger the next task when the preceding is done.  I also want to save a set of tasks as a template. I don't need any of fancy starting options from Project, just a simple A starts after A, C after B, etc.  I am also happy with completion of A triggering only one other task (B) and not a set (B,C,D). I can live with a 2 level hierarchy, but would prefer 3 levels (projects, sub projects and tasks). Thanks for asking

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2006
  I have just read through the previous blog which was started by Melissa Macbeth, and most entries seem to adequately describe what she has just asked again! It really isn't that difficult.

1. Just allow a task to be dragged into another task, making it a nested subtask.
2. Allow it to be a free backwards compatible upgrade into previous versions of Outlook, as the feature should have been there is the first place. (A suggestion from the the Bovine Aeronautical society..)

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  I gues it could best be described by a link! try http://www.abstractspoon.com/ and see. This is actually a very neat little program, with maybe a bit more functionality than should/could be used in outlook, but it show how a simple projectmanagement program with only tasks could be made.

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2006
  Melissa the main thing is to get something similar to your comment post i.e. 2 or 3 level of tasks.  Master project, sub projects, sub tasks, or Project, project tasks.   This would actually make Outlook much more usable.

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2006
  I use ClearContext in conjunction with Linenberger's Total Workday Control system. I would really like to be able to associate Master Tasks (functionally, long-term projects, classified as those without a due date) with my action oriented day to day tasks that I work on from 9 to 5 (they have due dates). Devin

• Anonymous
  October 22, 2006
  I would focus on time tracking.   When I receive an email requiring later action, I flag it.  I then use this email to prompt completion of the task.  However, it's not a task - i can't put further information in with the email.  I thus can't put a plan, or track sub-tasks completed and time taken as I work.  Finally, I can't then see, at the end of the month, how long this task took to complete.  I guess I have to make a new task, and then copy and paste the email into it?  This is harder than it could be. Additionally, I don't want to have to open up a journal item, click start, and keep that window open while completing the task.  This should be in the task, and starting and stopping shouldn't require opening that task. Further, I want to be able to select a set of completed tasks (whether from email or a created task), and have it count the sum of time taken to complete them. Iain

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2006
  Well, as a university student I would be pleased if I could enter the due date of a task directly w/o having to open every new task to assign one. Additionally it would be pleasant when I get an e-mail that's associated with a deadline or task that I can delete the task without deleting the associated e-mail or vice versa. I consider this practical, esp. if you want to tidy up your calendar or if you have to delete e-mails b/c of lack of space on your e-mail account (uni account is accessed by IMAP and has a low quota of 25MB). Irishdancer

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  HI, I would like to see some kind of "GOAL, Proyect, Task" hierarchical organization. With an option toogle between Commited and Deferred. And the option to review all as a outlook shows tasks. Also recomend to take a look to jello.dashboard is a HTML dashboard for outlook. It's very useful the link jello.wordpress.com. tanks for a great piece of software

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2006
  It is very difficult to implement outcome based planning and management in Outlook. Outcome, Project, Task, subtask are all needed.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2006
  There is some posibity to do search folders to work as "search all elements" in the tools menu? I want to see all the elements in a category (emails, contacts, tasks ...) not only emails. Is a little awkward to set a search every time I want to see that. Also about the commited and defferend I name in the other post. to get a task in the category it belongs but as deferred, but it only shows when I want to review all the task I must do, and set that to commited, and appear in the task pane as active task. Is an option between Active and Done.

• Anonymous
  October 28, 2006
  Sub-Tasks, that's what I need.  If you're into GTD, you know that almost everything you do is a project with multiple next actions.  I have started using MyLifeOrganized (MLO) because I can't deal with the lack of sub-tasks in OL2007 (and the slowness of creating new tasks in comparison to MLO).   Here's an example project: Project: Quote Desktop System for Client Next Actions:  - Call Client to discuss Requirements  - Configure system on Dell.com  - Request Quote from Dell  - Send Quote to Client  - Call Client to discuss the quote  - Order System  - E-mail Technician about the order being placed Other Features I'd love in Outlook 2020 (jk):

• Tabbed Interface (OneNote and IE7 are the only lucky ones to get tabs)
• Ability to see an Associated Project of a Next Action (including all e-mails, tasks, and contact information)
• Ability to have Calendar Views, Task Views, and Mail on one Screen (configure it however I want) ... I have a 24" LCD ... I have room to spare.
• Complete Sub-Tasks of a selected Project in order (toggle this on/off so you only view the current next actions)
• SpeedFiler built-in
• Rapid Task Entry (See MLO) Yes, I know you can do it by making a shortcut, but that's not the same.
• Manual Ordering of Tasks (esp just by using the keyboard)
• Tags (like del.icio.us)
• Portable App Support (U3)
• More priorities (10 would be nice)
• Tabbed Interface (Yeah, I know I posted this twice ... it's important!)
• Gmail's Conversation View ... I think Thunderbird is going to do that next.
• Syncing via FolderShare
• Deferring E-mails
• Better Interface for Reminders.  The reminder window should be resizable AND there should be like 5 or so buttons on it ... and be customizable with my own times.  So, one might be 5 minutes, another 22 minutes, another 3 hours, etc.  That would make it a one click snooze instead of three clicks it if I want to change the time.
• Color Coded Reminders (in the reminder window) Large Icons too. So ... Just buy Claritude (SpeedFiler), NetCentrics (GTD Add-In) and IngBox (Taglocity) and Caelo (Nelson Email Organizer) and you should be good to go! I could go on and on all day ... -- Tim

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2006
  My scenario is pretty simple. I want to enter a task, and give it a priority(1-4), severity(1-4), and category(home, work, church, …). Then have outlook show me my tasks grouped by category, and sorted by Priority, then severity. The outlook priority only has 3 levels, which isn't that useful to me. I added a custom priority field in Outlook 2003, and pretty much solved my problem. But now I see that my custom field isn't available for viewing or sorting in the TODO bar. Is that bug or by design? I also see 2 new fields in 2007 called Custom Priority and Custom Status. But I can't figure out how to use them. Can you discusss their purpose sometime?

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  Melissa, Why don't you take a look at Plan Plus 4.0. They've pretty much incorporated what Outlook should have had natively. For example, my wife and I were just looking at selling a car. Using Plan Plus and the project view, I quickly typed Sell car, enter/tab (to create a subtask) Get appointment for cleaning enter/ take for cleaning, enter/take picture, enter/ create ad, enter/ print ad in colour enter/ post Sell Car   Get appointment for cleaning   Take for cleaning   take picture   upload picture   create ad   print ad on colour printer   post ad in neighbourhood stores This is just a small personal project. I also had to paint my house recently and was quickly able to create a mini project with 20-30 tasks and go through methodically to finish. I can also put the tasks on my calendar and assign a time to them. I also tackle many small projects at work which a task/subtask feature helps me tremendously to tackle. Peter

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2006
  Absolutely the inclussion of Project, SubProject and task would be really useful in a day to day work. But not only are there purely named TASK in a whole day but also meetings, mails to do, etc. to complete certain projects; so it will be nice to have a kind of "task related activities" but not only TASK. Obviously consider the fact that it should be manageable in priorities. AldoCab

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2006
  Dear Melissa, I would like to see the ability to translate MS Project activities into Outlook tasks and to show the timelines for these in Calendar. The hierarchy would be the same as any hierarchy in Project. In case this = heavy(!), it would in any case be great to have in Outlook a similar sub-tasking ability as there is in Project. Also, good to be able to pull out tasks for the day from all projects into Outlook Today. Haven't had time to look at your release about the new version of Outlook, perhaps it's all there! Thanks for the question.

• Anonymous
  November 26, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 28, 2006
  Leopold, Thank you for your comments. Believe me, I wouldn't ask if I wasn't looking for a little kvetching. Your comments along with others who comment here help us to hear our customer needs - loud and clear. As far as cannibalizing MS Project’s sales – that is not why we didn’t implement subtasks this time around. We didn’t implement subtasks for the reasons given in my previous posts: the problems we identified with tasks and time management were not a lack of subtasks but a lack of visibility. Now that they are more visible, other problems, specifically the difficulty of planning projects in Outlook without subtasks, have become more apparent. (No guarantees here – just pointing out what has become more apparent.) OneNote helps, but OneNote isn’t the complete solution. The time management spectrum is wide: on one end of the spectrum is Outlook with a flat list of tasks, and at the other is Project, with a full blown scheduling engine, task dependencies, and so on. There is room to grow on either end! Project and Outlook are very different products with different customers and different usage scenarios.  If anything, we are trying to work better together, to learn from one another, and find better ways to satisfy our customers. Are there specific features besides subtasks that you wish you had in Outlook? How do you define subtasks – do they have dependencies, or is it just a hierarchy? Your feedback helps me to help you by helping me prove my case back in Redmond and to give my team focus. Thanks for your help! -Melissa

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2006
  Sorry I'm getting in on this so late, but I wanted to make my opinion known here. I don't even have time to read the previous entries to make sure someone hasn't said this already. Anyway, in my opinion, every single task I try to accomlish in my day to day life is a project in some respect. Brushing my teeth is a project just as is creating a new software product. Also, each task can contain sub tasks. That doesn't mean these tasks are grouped into folders.. That means I should have the same capabilities on a parent task as I would with sub tasks and they should supercede each other. So if I set a parent task's Status to Waiting on Someone Else, it should set that Status on all of the child tasks. I should also be able to mark a parent task as complete and have it mark all child tasks as complete. Of course, there are scenarios where a child task should not inherit its status from the parent task if, for example, the task can be delegated to someone else and isn't necessarily "on hold".. Tasks should also allow ordering in such a way that you cannot go from one task to another unless the previous task has been completed first. Those are the things I've always wanted to see.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2007
  I have a lot of mini-projects at work that include the same steps for each kind of project.  I would love to be able to set up projects in Outlook that have a preset list of subtasks to check off to make sure nothing gets missed for each process we have to go through.  These processes each last from as few as two days to two weeks to two months.  These are usually my top-priority projects that I am assigned to at work, with a specific deadline. At home, the projects aren't as straightforward as the ones assigned at work -- they aren't as well-defined, don't necessarily have a deadline, and the priorities shift a lot because there are so many things competing for my spare time.  For those projects, I have long wished there was an application like Microsoft Money but for projects -- but instead of tools for financial tracking and planning, it would have tools to track/plan time, projects and priorities.  For example, I have grouped my list of projects and tasks according to whether it's a creative project (creating a photo album or learning a new piece of music), or something leisure (like reading a book or completing a collection of figures), or projects around the house (building shelves, painting, hanging lights).   Logistically speaking, for either set of these projects the ideal would be to have them linked to my calendar in a way that my calendar is aware of the project categories and the project priorities.  For example.  If I say I am going to work on my creative projects every Tuesday night from 8:00 to 10:00, then I would like my Outlook calendar to mark off that time and my creative time, and then be aware of my highest priority project, and the top three top priority tasks within that, and display it right on my calendar. For me, the same link between my calendar, my projects, and my tasks -- and the priorities within them -- would be fantastic to have at work as well.  I could schedule all my phone calls and followup emails in the morning, and all the mini-projects in the afternoon... and have all those things show up in an integrated calendar display. integration is really the tops for me -- none of these projects is complex enough for Microsoft Project.  But adding together the volume of projects, and life gets complicated fast!  The separate outlook calendar and task list doesn't really do much to alleviate how complicated that can all become.  Throw kids in the mix, and then it really gets complicated! By the way...  I've seen many time management books talk about categorizing your time and tasks into time blocks on your calendar.  I compare it to being in college -- If I were in college looking at my task list, I would want my calendar to be aware of all my classes (appointments) and study times (another "kind" of appointment), and all the projects and tasks within each class.  And if I could see that all on the daily calendar view in a connected way -- WOW!  Now that would be a connected life!  That would help me out a lot!

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2007

1. Outlook is the only game in town for a lot of people (e.g. in the workplace).  If you need subtasks, you're in a real bind.  Make subtasks opt-in (e.g. enable under options) if there is any controversy.  Subtasks are must-have.
2. Outlook (and Project) already has flexible and customizable fields, sorting, grouping, and views.  These (in comb. with subtasks) should let people setup their favorite TM scheme (e.g. GTD).
3. Rule-based formatting and icons (like in Excel and Project).
4. Add the 'place' or 'context' idea (e.g. MLO).

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2007
  Tasks and Sub-Tasks Linking Tasks, (i.e. when I finish a task the next linked task pops up on the Outlook Today page and on the list of daily tasks) More Priority levels. From day one this has been a huge problem. Can it be so hard to go from 3 levels of priority to 5 or 6 or 10. I don't think the reason people don't use tasks is visibility. Its because tasks don't give enough flexibility.

• Anonymous
  September 24, 2007
  I haven't read all of the comments hear, but agree with many i've read.  Something i would like to see is a Totalling column/add on to outlook today or something....so, for example when i've organized all of my tasks, with TOTAL WORK specified for each, i could look at how many total hours they add up to, kind of like the way you can do a SUM in a sharepoint list. -c

• Anonymous
  October 04, 2007
  PROJECTS and SUBTASKS! 'nuff said.

• Anonymous
  January 07, 2008
  Why don't you just look at MLO and Achieve Planner and see what each of them does best. There isn't really any need to re-invent the wheel! These guys are already WAY AHEAD of you. Better still why not take them on and get them to help you redesign Outlook to be a proper personal project/task life management system - these guys deserve to make some money out of what they have created!

• Anonymous
  January 07, 2008
  By the way, Michael Linenberger who wrote "Total Workday Control" (Using Microsoft Outlook) strongly advocates only using three levels of priority. His experience shows that if you use any more than this, you start to spend more time working your priorities than is necessary and it becomes counter productive. On the other hand MLO (the My Life Organised application) has a slider for importance, so you just set this at an intuitive level... is another interesting approach with infinite level of prioritisation. Though that does cause a problem in syncing with Outlook's 3 levels.

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 20, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2008
  Andrew! you must be mad!!! who is going to buy MS Project than?