20 04 2017
Introduction to Microsoft To-Do
Microsoft launched yesterday a new cloud service called Microsoft To-Do. The aim of new service is to provide users with simple and familiar looking tool to plan a day. The new service comes with nice looking web interface and there are also apps available for most popular platforms, including Windows and Windows Phone.
NB! Microsoft To-Do works currently only with Microsoft Account. Support for Office 365 accounts is on the way and should be here over next few weeks.‘
Exploring Microsoft To-Do
Let’s log in and see what happens. After logging in there’s empty current day view. It’s convenient as we are usually interested in things we have to do right now or during the given day.
Adding new to-do item is easy but visually a little bit tricky. We expect this Add a to-do to open something on screen or making it clear what to do next but one must know that we have to move mouse after plus sign and start typing the title of to-do item.
After adding new to-do item we can double-click on it and specify more settings like reminder, due date and repeating. Screenshot below shows also additional note that can be added to to-do item.
After adding some to-do items and marking one item as done the to-do list looks like on screenshot below. Notice that the logic for adding to-do item draws out way better now than with empty list.
It’s possible to create more to-do lists if we need to group or separate to-do items.
Microsoft To-Do Apps
There are also apps available for Windows, Windows Phone, Android and iPhone. For Windows we have universal application that looks much like To-Do web interface. One thing to notice – Windows and Windows Phone apps have one additional option on menu – Family room. If we like we can also manage things we have to do with our families.
NB! If you don’t see Microsoft To-Do in Windows or Windows Phone store then you can use direct link to get application to your machine or device. The link is here: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=842320.
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Moving to Microsoft To-Do? Windows and Windows Phone apps of Microsoft To-Do allow us to import to-do items from Wunderlist and Todoist services.
Wrapping up
Launching Microsoft To-Do is logical step after more powerful Microsoft Planner service that is targeting teams and working groups in companies. Microsoft To-Do offers us simple and basic to-do lists management. For many simple people to-do lists are enought to organize their work and working days. The service is not targeted only to-do lists used at work – we can create to-do lists for whatever activities we like. Besides web site there are also apps available for all major platforms meaning that our to-do lists are always with us in our pocket.
References
- Introducing Microsoft To-Do—now available in Preview (Office Blogs)
- Microsoft To-Do (Home page)
- Windows and Windows Phone app (Windows Store)
- Android app (Google Play Store)
- iPhone app (Apple Store)
Using Entity Framework Core in-memory database for unit testing Detecting faces on photos using Microsoft Cognitive Services
How is this different than Microsoft Tasks? Planner? Outlook calendar? Seems we keep creating new tools to solve the same problem.
Microsoft Planner is targeted to business users and IMHO it is “too big” for keeping simple to-do lists. Sharing tasks on Outlook needs Exchange back-end that is not available for Outlook that Microsoft Account users have. Microsoft To-Do is modern cloud-based solution for to-do lists. It’s lightweight and doesn’t come with so much technical ballast than other options by Microsoft.
This is the Wunderlist replacement:
https://www.wunderlist.com/blog/your-preview-of-microsoft-to-do/
(Just pointing out this isn’t new.)