Randy Dean shows how to structure project workflows using Planner buckets, using an eLearning production pipeline as an example, then demonstrates embedding Planner in Teams. He also covers a supervisor template that combines personal tasks with individual team member lists, with automatic email notifications to keep everyone in sync.
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Hi everybody, Randy Dean, Email Sanity Expert here. Hey, I wanted to make a follow-up video to the video I did just recently. I did a video on the basics of how to use the Microsoft Planner tool. You'll often see Planner plus To Do, and it's one of your tools that's pretty likely in your Microsoft 365 suite if you have the upgraded professional version of Microsoft 365. And what's interesting What's interesting about this is— so I made that last video, it was sort of on the basics, you know, how I'm setting up different buckets for the different projects and activities that I'm working on, how I even have integrated this tool into my daily and weekly planning process as part of my broader time and project management system. And I'll try to leave a link up here at the top, but I'll also put a connection to that video at the end. After looking at it a little bit more, I wanted to share a couple more ideas because that's not the only way you can use this thing. And so I think if you see some of these examples of how you can use this tool, you'll understand why it is such a powerful yet simple tool to incorporate as part of your project, people, activity, event management systems. So the first one that I want to share with you is, you know, there's some projects that basically happen in specific stages. First this happens, then this happens, then this happens. And a lot of projects are sort of like that where you sort of have to follow sort of the order of things to get to the next step. And so I just wanted to share with you a quick little example of this that I created in my Microsoft Planner. So let's open it up here real quick, and I'll make myself a little smaller so you can see this. Um, this is my eLearning tasks. Now let me explain to you what this means. I often record full-length video programs, you know, 60 to 90 minute programs that I post and host out on my website. But I also do live webinars, and some of these are public webinars that basically allow people to take my courses more in-depth than what I do here on YouTube. And as part of that process, I actually have a series of steps that I need to go through. And so here's just a really simple example. As you can see, there's the pre-launch activities that need to be done, there's the activities that I need to do once I have confirmed orders, uh, there's the activities I need to do the day before and the day of the actual webinar, and the things I need to do once the event is over. And so as you can see, I can break this down into each of these stages using the bucket strategy to do just that and then build individual little checklists under each one of these so that I can basically make sure I don't forget anything. Because, you know, if I go through and do these in sort of that stepwise fashion, I'm going to probably have a much more successful event than if I just try to sort of do it all up in here. So that's one example. I think that's really good if you've got like a stepwise project or activity. Now, the second idea that I wanted to share with you is, let's say you're a supervisor and you have a team of 3 or 4 people that work with you. Take a look at this. Oh, before we do that, ah, I almost forgot. I wanted to show you one more little thing about this. And so notice this eLearning tasks. Before I go to the supervisor thing, let's come out here to my Teams. And you'll notice that in my Microsoft Teams, I actually have an online eLearning effort team. And under the General tab, look what I can find. That exact same Planner-based list project plan. Easy for me to say. It's the exact same thing. And let me show you something that's sort of cool about this. Inside of Microsoft Teams, you can see your Planner lists, and all you need to do is come up here to the top to add a tab, and then you can search. But notice right there's the Planner app. So if you wanted to add a tab with Planner, you could just click on the Planner app and you're going to have a tab now that has Planner inside of it. So you can actually build and create a list like this inside of your Teams instead of in Planner, but it will still be part of your Planner list of plans. You can also come down here and hit New Plan, and that's another way to start one of these plans. Okay, so, um, glad I got that out of the way. Now, I want to go back to that whole idea about being a supervisor and/or team leader. Take a look at this little template idea, and it's just really simple and basic. The first one is to-do. These are my to-dos as the supervisor. You know, I gotta find out if Emily got her vacation time blocked. Did Jill— I need to tell her about the order delay from Arizona. And Chris, I need to find out about the ABC client payment. So these are all things I need to do to keep my team informed, correct? But notice what else I can do. I can also make lists for each one of those team members. Here's all the things that I want to make sure Jill is working on. Here's the things I need Chris to be working on. Here's the things I need to have Emily working on. And one of the interesting things is, is with any one of these tasks, you can of course open it up and I could assign it to Chris. And if I wanted, I could even put in start date and due date and leave notes in here too. So, and then once I do the assign and save, it's going to basically send an email to Chris where he has the option to accept the task as part of his task list. But I can now track it here inside of mine and make sure those delegations are working properly. Now, of course, that sort of probably is going to work best if Chris is also in the same Microsoft 365 system. Not necessarily has to be that way because I've even sent stuff to my own Gmail account and I've gotten, you know, you have a task due on this date. But by having it all on the same internal system, it's going to synchronize much better across the team. So this is yet another way that you could utilize these tools to help manage these projects. So not only are are you gonna have your own projects, activities, things general for you and your work and your life. That was my last video. You could also have stepwise project plans with individual lists for each stage of the project. Thus, that way you don't have to recreate the wheel every time you do one of these, especially if it's a repeating project. And You can see it in your Microsoft Teams just by opening the tab and making sure Planner's in there. And you can also set it up so that you can be a better and more, um, responsive and responsible supervisor with a team that's organized and working on the right stuff at the right time. Pretty cool set of tools here. And like I said, it's what I love is its simplicity. It's, it's a pretty simple tool that's pretty easy to learn, but by these structures, it makes it easy for you to be a little more strategic, a little bit better organized. So I hope you like these ideas. If you have more ideas like this, please let me know, because if there's other ways that you're doing some of this stuff, I would really appreciate knowing about it because maybe I'll be able to add it into another future video. And feel free to leave comments even about some of the things that you might be doing with your Microsoft Planner and how you're integrating it into your daily tools. As obvious, if you like this video, please like, please consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't yet. Please share this video with others on your team that you think might find it useful. If you'd like to learn more about me, go check out my website, randalldean.com. And if you'd like to get my little series of productivity PDFs where I give you like links to my other videos and a few other documents that might help you with your productivity, just send me an email, randy@randalldean.com. Randallfdean.com, and I will get that out to you. Just put bonus PDFs or YouTube PDF in the subject line. I'll know what it means and I'll get you the information. So with that, thank you for your time and your attention. Hope you like this one. Bye now.
