OneNote 2013 - A Very Useful Task Management Tool, and Outlook 2013

This video is about using Microsoft OneNote as a very useful task management tool. I am explaining my approach to task management. You can watch this and adjust it to your needs and see how OneNote can simplify your task management on day to day basis.

This system works for me whether I use it on a project where agile methodology is used or a waterfall methodology or any combination of the two.

Check out my blog at: http://www.almirsCorner.com

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Closed Caption:

hello this is a linear from almonds
corner , today's video is about OneNote
as the task management tool
there are plenty of tools out there that
you can use to do the task management
from multiple tasks to evernote google
keep jura pivotal tracker only focus for
Apple devices and variety of apps you
can download on your iPhone your windows
for your android phone
so let me open here one note
so who's this for me you can use this
approach
whether you have a few tests that you
managing per day of victory has a
hundred tasks that your manager today
for example i happen to be the tech lead
on my team and the last project that I
worked on was 20,000 hours
there were eight engineers working on it
seven web developers for QA engineers to
database engineers he was a huge project
to start the project started off with
300 plus tasks and each one of these
tasks had about five to five to ten step
task so it was just huge to manage so i
had to use some type of the system to
manage this task and the overall goal is
to make it as mechanical as possible so
you can actually focus on the technical
details of the project and work with
your fellow engineers and fellow
developers so let me get started here on
the left hand side you have I created
here and note that called owners corner
that I used for the demos so this
notebook is split into multiple sections
have a section called to do general so
these are my day-to-day tasks that are
not related to a specific project maybe
it's something that I need to provide to
my boss may be a jerk you know put
together a weekly report or things
things like that and then I then I have
the project dedicated sections project
XYZ here is a section that i created
specifically for the demos that section
project XYZ
if you look on the right hand side is
broken
into three sections created a section
here called current sir
these are all the tasks that are being
worked on right now
this project backlog is what's going to
be worked on in the near future and then
at the bottom you can see the inbox
session
this is the section whereas the tasks
are coming and I'm talking to somebody
or read an email I just quickly create a
task that specifically this project and
ends up in the inbox and at the end of
the day i will review all these tests
sign somebody and assign it to somebody
and put it in the light of backlog
section or in the current section
so the next thing you can notice here is
that I'm using a specific naming
convention when I assign a task for a
specific person i came up with this
prefix called 80 underscore and in the
person's name down way I can narrow down
the search for example if I want to
search all the tasks that are assigned
to john i would just type 80 under on
the Scourge are and you would show me
here all the tasks are assigned to John
the beautiful featuring one note is that
if you click this link at the bottom or
press old coal generates a separate
panel here and in this here this panel
here it's going to highlight all the
tasks that are assigned to John
the reason why i like this and i use
this on daily basis because it kind of
gives me the big picture where the test
block
I can tell here the task 2b and 2c are
under current section 2 means that they
are being worked on and then these three
tests that are highlighted your sign -
John and they're under the back lock and
then if i scroll down at the bottom it
looks like there's nothing in the inbox
that's assigned to John but that's
that's normal because all the tests are
under inbox are are not categorize yes
then and there not assigned to anybody
yet
so that's the end it's the beautiful
search feature that I like to use in
OneNote another cool feature in one node
is is the using the is to sub sub pages
feature so we can hear in the current
section
you can tell the task today is being
worked on by Kevin
but then you have the task 2a 2b and 2c
by just the name you can talk it is
these are organized and 2a 2b and 2c are
kind of the child test the test two
so if you want to organize that in one
or you can just select 2a 2b and 2c and
drag it to the right and they
automatically become the child task to
task 2 and then you can go here and
minimize it if you don't want to look at
all the step test
so even though it's minimized here for
example cabin is the overall honor of
the task is assigned to him
you can tell that Kevin Owens the part
and it was working on the to a but John
is working at 2b and 2c
I can minimize it and search for John
and still going to find tasks that are
signed John even though there is subtask
passed away it basically expands that
task into its pages or sub task and you
can you can see the John so it kind of
gives you the nice picture perspective
can join is working on to be Kevin is
the overall honor of the task but here
are the you know the subtask you can
tell
let me see what else so there's the
emails are coming and and throughout the
day and I'm talking to my fellow
engineers
obviously i'm going to keep adding
texture so i might go over here and add
a task and task XYZ and i'm going to
come up with all the details here and I
know that it's has to be down today's
sorts right away i'm adding it under the
current section and I'm going to assign
it to for example to Jane
so let me open outlook over here
outlook 2013 so it's another way I
manage the emails in outlook a kind of
followed the flavor of getting things
done GTD were my inbox is empty but in
the end of the day but throughout the
day I organized all my emails by subject
so i can follow all the email threats
and reply to all the email threads so
let's assume the following this email
thread and I want to save it as a task
before the end of the day so I'm going
to try and I want to see the whole email
threats i'm going to select here all the
emails or i can use the shift 2 minutes
left them all at once and going to top
and send it to one and i want to send it
to all this corner and the project XYZ
so they're automatically going to be
sent to one load as individual pages but
obviously when organizing you don't want
to keep this is a separate page or
separate task
so the top 1 i'm going to keep as the
parent and doing what are going to be
the child so i'm going to select all the
child passed and drag it to the right
and they automatically becomes a child
I'm going I'm going to minimize it here
so you can tell it's got added to the
whole reason why I created the inbox
section at the bottom is that every time
I tasking to this project and
automatically goes into the inbox
section then I have responsibilities at
the end of the day to review all these
tasks here and sign in to people
so for example - task 5 30 anticipate
it's going to be assigned to Kevin and
i'm going to put it under category be on
there
the back lock fast 6 i'm thinking it's
gonna be hard
jon is going to work on it and i'm going
to drag it and maybe belongs under
category A in the back lock last seven
still don't know who I'm going to sign
it too but that that's ok because it's
in them i'm going to put it in a backlog
and i'm going to move it under category
B and this one I'm going to move in the
category C so at the end of the day I
got an empty inbox here and the hold
overall goal of the emails in the
outlook is that I as I add him as task
in the one north
I can drag them into inbox read email
folder and empty out my inbox in hot
water and then I start the next day with
the fresh and empty inbox when you see
here
going back to onenote have a section
called are basically the notebook on
this corner I broken down into multiple
sections i talked about project XYZ
but for this project i also have
completed tasks and good to go
so why I could create a project XYZ
completed tasks section is because as
that isn't working here and for example
task XYZ gets completed by jane and
mark and done and I'm going to put the
date when he was completed and I'll just
simply drag it into completed tasks so i
can manage older if i ever need to look
at what got completed i can click here
and review all the completed tasks and
go back to all the current backlog and
the inbox here
why i created section called Project X Y
Z good to know as the project is going
on
things are flying quickly read getting
things done and sometimes there's
certain things you want to save for
future and put it on the team which is
so instead of trying to categorize the
right at that moment you can quickly
drag items into a brutal section and
when the project is done you can
organize it and put it under to team
wiki section where you can organize all
the documents in private
proper categories that's pretty much how
I manage the tasks in OneNote one of the
questions that you may ask is that how
do you backup all this
I work for a company where security is
very important so all my one node is
saved on the hard drive of my computer
but at the end of the day I back it up
to a network drive that's dedicated
friday that's under my name in case my
computer crashes I can always recover
one my one gold notes if your computer
savvy you can you know right a little
command line script that you can
double-click on at the end of the day
and just copies it to this network drive
another option is if if you're allowed
to say information the cloud you can
sync your notebook into the cloud into
Microsoft onedrive and that way you
don't have to worry about as if you walk
over to another computer computer and
you have one not installed on it
you can open the same notebooks over
there is going to be synced into unto
that computer
so that's pretty much how I manage my
test in OneNote
where did you use OneNote 2013 on one or
two thousand ten what i described here
is pretty much the same
thank you very much this is all here
from all of us cornered of car