Forum Discussion
How do you view To Do tasks in Outlook online?
I have an automated workflow that creates a task for a user. The user is an admin account that's not accessed any way other than a web browser. I'm adding a To Do task for the user but I'm not finding this in Outlook.
Is it the intention that items assigned to the user can only be viewed in To Do?
If the user doesn't have this application opened, how would they know the task has been assigned?
I can find methods to notify the user via power automate or just create a calendar event but it just seems like I might as well not use the To Do connector at all at that point. It just strikes me as odd that this application appears to be locked out of integrating with any other M365 products. What am I missing?
Anthony-123hey, just clarifying what you're asking for. You want to create a task for a user and you want that user to know that the task has been created? You could do that in one Power Automate flow.
If it's just your user opening To Do - in Outlook online, To Do should be in the left sidebar. When your user selects this, it should open the web version of To Do and navigate back to their mail at the bottom left of the screen.
You can also navigate directly here: https://to-do.office.com/
- This account isn't exactly a "user" account. I call it the "workflows" account - so the business workflows aren't tied to me, the admin. So, it's not actively monitored.
I was asking if To Do tasks are able to appear in Outlook Calendar or if there's any notification without having To Dos opened. From what I've found, this isn't possible. This breaks my brain a bit but then I realize we're talking about Microsoft here and they don't have much comprehension regarding calendars.
If you don't have the app installed on your device or opened in a browser, how would you otherwise know a task is assigned?
The person utilizing this account isn't going to open To Do every hour to check for new tasks (and these auto-generated tasks are assigned for a specific date in six weeks). It doesn't seem that there's a link to a To Do task which I can link to in PowerAutomate so I can't send a Teams notification to the account with a reference to the task. At most, I can say - there's a new task called "Do this thing", open To Do for more info.
Alternatively, I can just create a calendar event. This appears in Outlook and I can link to it in a Teams notification saying - there's a new task for you in your calendar called "Do this thing" and here's a link to it. So, now I can get a notification, always reference the notification, and view the task/event in my calendar.
So, To Do does not seem to be a good tool for assigning tasks to do. Or, at least, it's not good for notifying someone that they have to do something six weeks in the future.
