12 Oct, 2020
Microsoft Teams just added another key feature
Cloud

Tasks in Teams aims to provide a straightforward means of assigning and managing duties over Microsoft Teams.

teams-mobile-and-desktop-tasks-app.jpg

Tasks in Teams, quite simply, allows you to assign tasks in Teams. 

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s work management app, Tasks (formally Planner) is now available to all commercial Teams users with a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Tasks in Teams lets users manage assignments from the Planner and To Do apps via Microsoft’s workplace collaboration hub. Tasks can be assigned to both groups and individual teams members within Teams.

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As requested by Teams customers, users will soon be able to create tasks from Teams chats or channel conversations as well.

Tasks in Teams is now available in the desktop and web versions of Microsoft Teams to all non-government tenants. Government Community (GCC) customers will receive Tasks in Teams “in the coming months” as Microsoft rolls it out to its government cloud offerings.

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“Tasks in Teams brings together your team plans and individual tasks into one, collaborative space alongside all your chats, meetings, and files,” Microsoft said.

Tasks in Teams for the Teams mobile app will shortly begin rolling out to all users in non-government clouds and is scheduled to be completed in November.

Microsoft announced in April this year that it was rebranding its Planner app to Tasks in an effort to provide a single, unified app for planning and managing work within Teams.

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According to Microsoft, because Tasks replicates the design from its Planner and To Do apps, there is “almost nothing new to learn.”

What might prove more confusing is the unconventional naming strategy Microsoft is taking to the desktop and mobile versions of Tasks in Teams.

“This announcement also moves us to the next stage in our naming sequence, where the app name in Teams changes to Tasks by Planner and To Do in desktop and Tasks in mobile,” the company said.

“We will make this change over a weekend to reduce the likelihood of users seeing different names as the name change rolls out, and we expect to make the change by the end of October. We will make an update to our Message Center post when we kick off this change.”

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