How to Organize Workloads with Digital Task Management Solutions

Task management is crucial to efficient work productivity, and yet it is also the bane of many individuals’ professional life. Whether you are the most organised person in the world, or struggle with organisation on a daily basis, task management can become quite frustrating.

This is why more and more individuals, teams, and organisations are turning to digital task management tools. We discussed this with TechQuarters, a London-based Microsoft Solutions Partner, with over 12 years’ experience providing business IT support London-based companies have relied on. They offered some tips on how to organise your workday from the beginning of the day, till the end of play – including the types of task management solutions that individuals and teams should be using.

Task Management Solutions

For Individuals

The most common type of digital task management solution for individuals to use is digital to-do lists. With to-do lists, individuals have the freedom to organise their workday into as many actionable items as they wish. Digital to-do lists usually include a range of functionality – for example, TechQuarters pointed to Microsoft To Do, which allows you to create sub-tasks under a task, as well as add links and files to a task to provide context. Some individuals might prefer to just have an outline of their main prioritise; whereas others prefer to systematically breakdown each of their tasks into each individual step.

For Teams

When dealing with a coordinated effort between multiple people, it is best to be able to track the work of each individual that is involved. So, solutions that combine each team member’s tasks into a unified interface – so that colleagues or managers can view everyone’s progress simultaneously – are preferable. The ideal team work management solution is one that can enables individuals to visualise their tasks, allows managers to assign one or more individuals to a task, and provide them with all the resources to complete the work whilst tracking their progress. 

TechQuarters pointed to two solutions that are good for this: The first was Microsoft Planner, which is a digital Kanban-board apps; the second was Microsoft SharePoint, which enables organisations to create team sites for collaboration, file sharing, and ongoing conversations. As SharePoint consultants, TechQuarters highly recommend SharePoint, for it is a highly customisable solution that is ideal for information sharing.

Tips for Using Task Management Solutions Effectively

• Team and Individual Tasks in One View

If you are part of a team that is working on a project, but you also have tasks associated with your individual work responsibilities, then it is important that you don’t overlook either of your tasksets. To ensure optimal task management, it should be possible to arrange both individual tasks and team tasks into a single, unified interface. When we asked TechQuarters, they pointed to solutions that bridge the gap between tasks; for example, Microsoft Teams enables users to view all of their tasks, across different teams and projects, in the task view.

• Visualize Tasks in your Calendar

Keeping on top of individual and team assignments isn’t just about being able to see each task you have in your workload. Being able to visualise all of your tasks within the context of your daily, weekly, and monthly schedule helps with knowing when each of your tasks needs to be done by.

This is why populating your digital calendar (which is something every professional should have), is very important. Whether you are able to migrate data from your task management app directly into your calendar app, or you simply have to manually arrange tasks in your calendar, it is a worthwhile process. In doing this, you can start to prioritise your tasks more effectively.

• Convert Emails into Tasks

Emails are perhaps the most popular – or at least the most common – form of communication in business. Whether it is via a direct request, or through subtext, a lot of your tasks and responsibilities come to you through emails.

If your email and your task management software is integrated, may be able to convert content from an email into actional tasks. For example, Microsoft Outlook has an integrated tasks function that does this exact thing.