Microsoft To-Do just got a refresh on it’s mobile application look & features. These updates make it much more personal and – in my opinion – fun too. It gives me more flexibility to personalize how my lists look and recent updates help managing lists and tasks in To-Do much better than before.
To-Do got the look
The My Day -view is clear and visual. Accompanied with dark theme the tasks pop out and selectable background photo (alas, no custom photos – you need to choose from the list) makes different lists stand out. You can also setup the theme in pastel colors for those lists that benefit it better. Like important-list with red title text.
Adding a new task brings relevant options together.
When creating a new list, you can define the theme color right away. If you want to change the theme or background photo later you can choose the top-right corner … menu.
You can also add multiple accounts (both Office 365 and Microsoft Accounts) to your application. Switching between accounts is really fast, thus making it usable to use different accounts for work and home use.
Update: The desktop app was also update along with this process. Check the latest version out! It syncs background photos too into lists.
Read more from Microsoft’s To-Do blog post: https://aka.ms/tw/newtodo
Download To-Do app: https://aka.ms/mvp/newtodo
Send to To-Do when using Android mobile
Android-users are in luck: they can send just about “anything” into To-Do, since it is incorporated into Share -functionality. Mostly I use that for Tweets I want to get back to, copying URLs for later reference etc. While sending web pages to computer is possible, I prefer using To-Do since I can then choose to ding it when I am done with the link.
When the web page is sent to To-Do you can select from various options directly:
- My Day view or place it into chosen list
- Due Date
- Reminder
- Recurrence
My To-Do practices
In a recent twitter conversation was asked what are everyone’s best practices and tips on To-Do. That woke me up to think for a list and of course refining it into this post a bit. But just like Modern Workplace, Teams, To-Do and all other born-in-cloud tools: this is just a snapshot of current moment, tomorrow may bring again something new.
- Send to To-Do, instead trying to copy-paste urls into notebook or even into Kaizala me. To-Do is so much better in this.
- Share your lists when you need to work on tasks with other people (and Teams/Planner is not in use with them!). Sharing is not limited to organization bounds.
- Create groups and place most of your lists into groups. Create a group for “Rarely Used” where you place those lists that are not currently active.
- Create a template-group and create some template lists there. Important: create lists first as templates and then duplicate them for use. (yes, you can duplicate a list). I learned from my first template: it was a list with scheduled tasks and recurrences and done tasks. That didn’t work since schedule comes along with duplication – and all tasks are marked not done.
- Use recurring tasks for daily, weekly or monthly tasks.
- Due dates are good for scheduling and reminders don’t let your forgot important dates!
- Track flagged emails and Planner tasks in To-Do. Remember: these go hand-in-hand with your account: if you use multiple Office 365 accounts then each one has it’s own Flagged/Assigned to me lists.
- Use subtasks and notes in tasks. When I prepare for a webinar or session I usually use a single task with subtasks and place links/notes into subtasks or into task notes.
- Ding often. Balance between this and the previous bullet (subtasks). Dinging is good for the soul since something gets done. To-Do should include a subtask ding too.. (update: with latest versions it does Ding on subtasks!)
Vesa Nopanen - My Metaverse Day 