I am perpetually on the hunt for the perfect task management system. In my personal life, I’ve gone from Trello, to Todoist, and have currently landed on TickTick.
But work is a different story.
At work, I’m usually in a fixed software environment, so my choices are limited. And, I’m usually having to work with some tracking system that’s already in place, that I want my task management tool to play nice with so I can minimize duplicate entry.
The role I’m currently in has been my biggest task management talent yet. Here’s the environment:
- We are a Microsoft shop. I have to get special dispensation to install software that’s not on the approved list, and that request form is a beast.
- The larger team that I’m a part of reports on workload using a custom built SharePoint list that has to be kept up to date. This list does not have the task management features I need. Furthermore, I do not want to have to enter information on this list, then manage a separate task list, so integration is key
- I have dozens of projects running at a given time, most of which require constant follow up – and I work best when I can see those follow ups easily
Here’s what I’ve tried before my current solution:
- Microsoft Planner: this allowed me complete integration with the SharePoint list via Power Automate. I used this system for awhile, but found myself getting more and more frustrated with Planner’s limitations.
- Microsoft To Do: same as Planner, full integration, but frustrating to use.
- Microsoft Loop: this got me really excited at first, but it just doesn’t work very smoothly, AND there’s no way to use Power Automate to integrate this with the SharePoint list.
I was so frustrated. I was keeping project notes in OneNote, adding items to the SharePoint list, and not satisfied with any task management system I tried. So I asked Copilot for ideas, and it recommended OneNote for task management.
Whaaaaaa?!
I mean, I was already using OneNote for project notes – could I really use it for task management? It ended up being simpler than I thought. So here’s my new process:
- I create the work item in the SharePoint list
- I click a button that starts a Power Automate flow which creates a OneNote page and a File Folder for the project.
- In OneNote, in addition to tracking project notes, I use tags for follow up tasks. It doesn’t really matter what tag I use, but they are all formatted as MM/DD do this thing.
- To see what I need to do, I click Find Tags, and sort by Tag Text. This gives me a view of everything I need to do in date order.
- When a project is complete, I update the SharePoint list.
Voila – task management achieved! The only thing I’m missing are popup reminders, but since I have OneNote open all day anyway, and I have it in a position where I can always see the upcoming tags, that’s not been an issue.
Right now, this is working very well for me. I may change my mind about that in a few months (seriously, I have problem with constantly seeking the perfect system), but for now, it’s working great.