Book Image

Efficiency Best Practices for Microsoft 365

By : Dr. Nitin Paranjape
Book Image

Efficiency Best Practices for Microsoft 365

By: Dr. Nitin Paranjape

Overview of this book

Efficiency Best Practices for Microsoft 365 covers the entire range of over 25 desktop and mobile applications on the Microsoft 365 platform. This book will provide simple, immediately usable, and authoritative guidance to help you save at least 20 minutes every day, advance in your career, and achieve business growth. You'll start by covering components and tasks such as creating and storing files and then move on to data management and data analysis. As you progress through the chapters, you'll learn how to manage, monitor, and execute your tasks efficiently, focusing on creating a master task list, linking notes to meetings, and more. The book also guides you through handling projects involving many people and external contractors/agencies; you'll explore effective email communication, meeting management, and open collaboration across the organization. You'll also learn how to automate different repetitive tasks quickly and easily, even if you’re not a programmer, transforming the way you import, clean, and analyze data. By the end of this Microsoft 365 book, you'll have gained the skills you need to improve efficiency with the help of expert tips and techniques for using M365 apps.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Efficient Content Creation
7
Section 2: Efficient Collaboration
10
Section 3: Integration

Step 2 – finding time to execute tasks

When do we "actually" execute our work? "Between meetings" is the most common answer I hear! Let's change that scenario.

The Tasks folder contains tasks. Tasks contain a deadline or due date. Unlike what you would expect, reminders are off for tasks. You can enable them if you want, but it is not a good idea. Why? Because if you get a reminder and you do not have time to do the job at that point, you are going to postpone it and then forget about it.

A better option is to proactively block your time – well in advance (if possible) – to execute the pending work. As you know, time can be blocked only in Calendar. So here is how you do it. This is possible only in the desktop version of Outlook:

  1. Go to Calendar. Make it fullscreen. Keep it at the Daily or Weekly level. Do not use the Monthly level. Now we want to see tasks as well.
  2. Right-click on the Tasks icon and choose Open in New...