Task Tracking in Office 365: a Comprehensive Guide with Kanbanchi
Task management is essential for teams and businesses striving for organization, timely project completion, and goal attainment. But what exactly is task tracking, and how can you effectively leverage it within your existing tools like Office 365? What is currently being used for task tracking in Office 365?
What is Task Tracking?
Task tracking is the systematic process of monitoring tasks from initiation to completion. It involves several key components:
Planning: Defining the tasks necessary to achieve a specific objective.
Prioritizing: Ranking tasks based on their urgency and importance.
Assigning: Allocating tasks to specific team members.
Monitoring: Tracking task progress to ensure timely completion.
Effective task tracking enhances productivity, improves collaboration, and reduces stress for teams and individuals.
Popular Task Management Methodologies
Several established methodologies can enhance your task management efforts:
Kanban: A visual system employing boards and cards to track tasks through various stages (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done).
Learn more about Kanban boards and how they enhance task tracking
Getting Things Done (GTD): A time management system focused on capturing all tasks and organizing them into actionable steps.
Pomodoro Technique: A time management method dividing work into focused intervals (typically 25 minutes) separated by short breaks.
Eisenhower Matrix: A prioritization tool categorizing tasks by urgency and importance, helping you focus on critical activities.
Explore best practices for creating and managing effective to-do lists
Task Tracking with Office 365
Office 365 provides a suite of tools suitable for task tracking, making it a popular choice for many teams.
Office 365 has features that help companies set up and run their day-to-day activities with ease. It has the ability to manage projects, tasks, and emails in one place, allow multiple users to work collaboratively, provide information about work progress, make it easy to manage compliance needs, and maintain records of work done.
You can use Office 365 to easily organize, manage, and share documents with your team. Anyone with an Office 365 account has access to use their task management tools. Teams and managers can set up groups in an organization’s workspace to communicate and work together on particular responsibilities and projects using Outlook and its companion business tools.
You can create, share, and update reports and documents using tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You may add events to Outlook Calendar, collect requests and feedback using Microsoft Forms, and store documents and media in OneDrive.
When combined, these apps offer a range of contemporary work and task management options. However, when a business expands, putting into place better workflow and system management techniques becomes crucial.
To manage many teams, track progress, and accomplish more at scale, you need project management software that is more sophisticated, organized, and automation-friendly. Spreadsheets are insufficient at this point.
This indicates that it is time to switch to a more capable task and project management solution, such as Kanbanchi. The good news is that Kanbanchi connects with Office 365’s project management tools and apps, giving you the extra advantages you need to manage your teams and projects more effectively while also increasing organizational efficiency.
Overview of Office 365
Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of productivity applications and services. It includes familiar applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. It also provides cloud storage through OneDrive and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams.
Administrators can implement sophisticated security measures, such as multi-factor authentication and data loss prevention policies, to strengthen security and protect data within an organization’s Office 365 environment. Office 365 apps enable hybrid and remote teams to swiftly and efficiently collaborate.
Core Office 365 Apps for Task Tracking
Specific Office 365 apps might be more beneficial for your teams depending on the inputs, outputs, and workflows of your firm. Excel, Word, OneDrive, Calendar, Outlook, PowerPoint and Forms are the most widely used Office 365 planning products. Let’s learn about each one in more detail.
Excel
One of the crucial Office 365 project management tools is Excel. It is spreadsheet software for teams and individuals that is hosted in the cloud.
Teams may design and track project plans using Excel, which is straightforward and simple to use. They can also save and alter data and provide detailed reports. To accomplish their objectives, teams can work together in real-time on spreadsheets. In order to promote accountability and transparency and avoid sending duplicate copies of the same document, invited members can view the history of changes made to the sheet.
Excel is a tool that project managers may use to plan and oversee projects. They have the option of either starting from scratch or using the software’s given templates. Excel is still not the best project management tool. It wasn’t designed for project management, but can be used for that purpose. While project managers can construct task lists and timetables, they are unable to observe how resources and requirements are shared between projects.
A visual representation of the project roadmap and who is in charge of what is provided via spreadsheet timelines and manual lists. Excel does not, however, offer useful project management features like alerting team members when a bottleneck exists or highlighting individuals with a lesser workload. Data from previously finished projects could potentially be misunderstood or lost.
Word
One of the most widely used Office 365 planning tools for remote teams is Word. It is a simple cloud-based word processing program that allows teams and individuals to work together in real-time and create documents in a variety of formats, such as .docx, .pdf, or zipped.
The team’s productivity, creativity, and collaboration all increase when using Word. Project plans, product roadmaps, and milestones can be described in detail and distributed by managers to empower their teams, gain buy-in, and solicit feedback.
OneDrive
For the majority of organizations today, OneDrive project management is essential. The cloud-based software application offers a low-cost or free means to organize, store, and distribute files, documents, and other digital assets.
All Office 365 users receive online storage through OneDrive. As long as users and teams have downloaded the necessary files in advance, they can access documents on OneDrive in locations with slow internet.
OneDrive is not exclusively designed for project management, though. With its cloud-based storage features, it improves project management and team collaboration but does not prioritize project management. There are many different business needs that OneDrive can meet.
Using the right permissions level, OneDrive enables teams and managers to organize files into folders and subfolders before sharing them with particular email groups or team members. Example: view-only access, comments access, and editing access.
You can store and share documents, but you are unable to make tasks, appoint teams to them, extract reports, or monitor progress.
When OneDrive integrates with powerful project management software like Kanbanchi, its capabilities are increased, ongoing projects are streamlined, files and assets are kept accessible, and communication and task information are kept in the same location as your projects.
Outlook Calendar
Another essential element of Office 365 is Outlook Calendar. You can create events, set deadline reminders, and invite members of the engaged team to events using Outlook Calendar.
Managers may plan meetings and events, invite teams and stakeholders, and create calendars for specific projects. To prevent team members from overloading with events and timelines, you may also create and share numerous calendars.
Outlook Calendar increases team productivity and collaboration when utilized properly. You can customize your calendar to notify you before each meeting or event. You can set up tasks, objectives, and reminders.
Project managers can layer each team member’s schedule to see when everyone is available in large executive teams where it might be difficult to organize events that fit with everyone’s calendar. For the best scheduling outcomes, encourage managers and staff to share their calendars.
By arranging your calendar to deliver a daily agenda containing your daily schedule before you begin working, you may take advantage of automation and take more control over your schedule. This makes it easier to remember crucial upcoming events and team meetings.
You can enhance your Outlook Calendar project management capabilities and easily track objectives, tasks, and other milestones by integrating Outlook Calendar with your project management program like Kanbanchi.
PowerPoint
Another excellent Office 365 planning tool for both individuals and businesses is PowerPoint. You can create presentations, proposals, and other graphic documents with it.
What about project management, though? To sketch out your vision, set deliverables, and produce project reports with graphs, charts, and visual components, PowerPoint offers simple tools.
PowerPoint is especially helpful for scattered or remote teams. During online video meetings conducted using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other video conferencing software, it permits screen-sharing and live presentations.
In order to make it simple for team members to stay informed about ongoing projects, you can attach a PowerPoint link to meeting notes and calendar invites. Additionally, PowerPoint offers templates to make work go more quickly.
Microsoft Forms
A free online survey or questionnaire tool is Microsoft Forms. It allows easier gathering of opinions and responses from teams, customers, and other stakeholders.
One of the core Office 365 project management tools is Microsoft Forms. It makes gathering information and feedback from internal and external sources simpler. It also presents the results in various ways like graphs, charts, and spreadsheets. Microsoft Forms is quick and simple to set up, and it integrates well with other Office workplace products.
Microsoft Forms is useful to automate certain of your chores and projects even though it is not a specialist project management tool. Examples include receiving service or support inquiries and comparing project-relevant data side by side.
Outlook
The focal point of Office 365 project management is Outlook. It currently has hundreds of millions of users globally, making it the most widely used email network. Since Outlook offers access to the majority of the Office 365 apps, most savvy people and organizations use it for work.
No matter how big your teams or projects are, you might need to provide team members and other stakeholders with specific instructions or comments. To increase efficiency, Outlook can help you organize both your ongoing work and incoming emails. Users can attach files and media to emails or include a link to OneDrive to send them (for larger media sizes).
Can you use Office 365 tools in task management?
Benefits for users of the Office 365 project management software are numerous. Its biggest flaw is that users must combine at least five Office 365 apps to get a straightforward project management and planning solution because it is not the best for project management.
Here’s an example: A project manager can use Excel to create a project plan and timeline, Outlook to communicate with team members and stakeholders, and Outlook Calendar to schedule a meeting to discuss the project. In the email, the manager provides a Word link to the agenda. A Microsoft Forms link is there in this Word to collect comments on the project schedule and plan.
Nearly all of the fundamental features a project manager needs to start and manage projects are available in Office 365. For inventive, quickly expanding enterprises, it delivers them in a piecemeal, haphazard package that is neither elegant nor sustainable.
Limitations of Office 365 for Task Tracking
If you decide to use Office 365, you must constantly keep an eye on your workflows and the performance of your team. You will need to develop solutions for anything that isn’t functioning and establishing ground rules that everyone must abide by.
Supercharging Task Management with Kanbanchi
Luckily, Office 365 users have a perfect task management alternative. Kanbanchi is a simple task management tool that will assist you in tracking your projects and managing your workflow. And it is very simple to use. It enables you to delegate tasks to team members, monitor team development, and view the backlog of upcoming activities. You may track projects in real-time with Kanbanchi and provide reports for better outcomes.
Benefits of Kanbanchi
Visual Task Management: Kanbanchi uses a Kanban-style board to visualize tasks, making it easy to track progress and identify bottlenecks.
Collaboration: Enables team members to collaborate in real-time, assign tasks, and share files.
Integration with Office 365: Kanbanchi seamlessly integrates with OneDrive, allowing you to attach files and access them directly from your Kanbanchi boards.
How Kanbanchi Enhances Office 365
When OneDrive integrates with powerful project management software like Kanbanchi, its capabilities are increased, ongoing projects are streamlined, files and assets are kept accessible, and communication and task information are kept in the exact location of your projects.
Explore how Kanbanchi supports enterprise-level project management
Integrating Kanbanchi with Office 365
The best aspect is that Office 365 and Kanbanchi work perfectly together. All of your data and other files are easily accessible to you. Above all, you will be able to access information from your OneDrive account on your Kanbanchi boards. You can also work even more closely with your team members.
Office 365 provides a range of tools that can be used for task management. For teams that require more robust features and a dedicated task management system, integrating with tools like Kanbanchi can significantly enhance productivity and collaboration.