microsoft task assignment tool

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Templates for planners and trackers

Keep track of all your plans with handy, customizable templates for all your planning and tracking needs, whether for business or personal use. you'll find ways to keep everything organized, including health and food journals, budgets for business or home, trip planning spreadsheets, sales call logs, and more..

Stay organized with planner and tracker templates

Maximize your productivity at work and home using free, customizable templates. It's not easy staying organized these days, but using the right tools helps you prioritize and remember your most important tasks. Whether your run your own online business or need to plan out your busy social calendar, creating a personalized planner makes life easier. Setting ambitious goals for next year? Use a tracker template to measure your progress and see how far you've come. Choose a planner or tracker template and customize it to fit your unique needs. If you're using a planner for work, add custom branding like your business's logo or color palette. Try out new fonts and design elements that match your personal aesthetic. Once you've created your perfect planner or tracker, get ready for a productivity boost. Print out your design or share it digitally with your coworkers or family members. Don't worry if your plans change—using a template makes it easy to revisit your designs and make updates in the future.

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Assignments in Teams for Education

• 25 contributors
• Applies to: Microsoft Teams

The Assignments and Grades features in Teams for Education allow educators to assign tasks, work, or quizzes to their students. Educators can manage assignment timelines, instructions, add resources to turn in, grade with rubrics, and more. They can also track class and individual student progress in the Grades tab.

Learn more about Assignments and Grades in Teams for Education .

For details about Teams assignments on different platforms, see Teams features by platform .

Assignments integrations in the Microsoft Teams admin center

Using the admin settings in the Microsoft Teams admin center, you can turn features on or off for educators within your organization and their students.

To view and manage Assignment settings, go to Education > Assignment settings in the Teams admin center.

The following are settings related to Assignments:

Weekly guardian email digest

Guardian emails are sent each weekend to parents or guardians. The email contains information about assignments from the previous week and for the upcoming week. The Parent and Guardian Sync can be setup using School Data Sync .

Import parent contact information via Parent and Guardian Sync in SDS. For instructions on how to enable Parent and Guardian Sync, see Enabling Parent and Guardian Sync .

Turn on the Guardian Setting in the Microsoft Teams admin center, as the setting is turned off by default. This will enable teachers to send out a weekly digest.

Teachers can opt-out of the digest by deselecting the setting inside their own personal class team ( Assignment Settings > Parent/Guardian Emails ).

To verify that Parents will get the email, the following three items must be true:

Email address attached to the student profile in SDS and tagged as Parent or Guardian . For details, see Parent and Guardian Sync File Format .

Students belong to at least one class in which e-mail isn't disabled by the teacher in assignment settings .

The emails will contain information about assignments that have a due date from the previous week or in the upcoming week.

Default setting for this feature is - Off .

Microsoft MakeCode is a block-based coding platform that brings computer science to life for all students.

MakeCode is a Microsoft product that is subject to the Microsoft terms of use and privacy policies.

To enable MakeCode assignments in Teams, go to the Teams Admin Center , navigate to the Assignments section, and turn the MakeCode toggle option to On . Select Save . Allow a few hours for these settings to take effect.

For more information on how this feature works, watch this video demonstration .

Learn more about MakeCode .

Turnitin is an academic integrity service. This is a third-party service that is subject to its own terms and privacy policy. You're responsible for your use of any third-party products and services.

To enable Turnitin for your organization, you'll need a Turnitin subscription. Then, you can input the following information, which can be found in your Turnitin admin console:

• TurnitinApiKey : This is a 32-character GUID found in the admin console under Integrations.
• TurnitinApiUrl : This is the HTTPS URL of your Turnitin admin console.

Here are some instructions to help you obtain this information.

The TurnitinApiUrl is the host address of your admin console. Example: https://your-tenant-name.turnitin.com

The admin console is where you can create an integration and an API key associated with the integration.

Select Integrations from the side menu, then select Add Integration and give the integration a name.

The TurnitinApiKey will be given to you after you follow the prompts. Copy the API key and paste it into the Microsoft Teams admin center. This is the only time you can view the key.

Upon clicking the Save button in the admin center for this setting, allow a few hours for these settings to take effect.

Assignments data

Assignments stores information that is generated both by teachers and students. All the data is co-shared between teacher and the specific student for which the information is intended in class. There are two stores of this data, SharePoint and outside of SharePoint.

The same rules also apply to first-party integrations such as Reading Progress.

Assignments data in SharePoint document libraries

Students' files associated with a Submission for Assignment are stored in a document library (named: Student Work ). Files associated with Assignments that are created by teachers and accessible by Students are stored in another document library (named: Class Files ) in the corresponding Class Team SharePoint site. First-party integrations may also store Assignments data in the same corresponding Class Team SharePoint site (named: Assignments title + time stamp ).

Files associated with the student

IT admins can use the Content Search tool to search for student files ( Student Work , Class Files , or other 1st-party integration files) that are related to assignment submissions and files that are related to assignments. For example, an admin could search all SharePoint sites in the organization and use the student's name and class or assignment name in the search query to find data relevant to a data subject request (DSR).

Files associated with the teacher

IT admins can use the Content Search tool to search for teacher files ( Student Work , Class Files , or other 1st-party integration files) that are related to assignments and files distributed to students by the teachers within a class on assignments. For example, an admin could search all SharePoint sites in the organization and use the teacher's name and class or assignment name in the search query to find data relevant to a DSR.

Assignments data outside of SharePoint document libraries

Some data related to Assignments isn't stored in the class team SharePoint site, which means it's not discoverable with Content Search. This includes:

• Student grades and feedback from the teacher
• The list of documents submitted for an assignment by each student
• Assignment details like Due Date, etc.
• First-party integration data like Reading Progress passages or student pronunciation data

For this type of data, an IT admin or data owner, such as a teacher, may have to go into the assignment in the class team to find data relevant to a DSR. The admin can add themselves as an owner to the class and view all the assignments for that class team.

If a student is no longer part of the class, their data might still be present in the class as no longer enrolled . The student will have to provide the tenant admin the list of such classes that they were ever a part of.

Bulk Export assignment data outside of SharePoint document libraries

For a student.

To bulk export a single student's data, before removing the student from the classes they're part of, run the script and provide the userId . If the student has been removed from the site, either the admin can add the student back to the class before running the script, or the admin can provide the userId and the classId that the student was ever a part of.

The data about the student submissions will be exported.

For a teacher

Bulk Export assignment data works the same way for a student, but all submissions that the teacher has access to will be exported.

Bulk Delete assignment data outside of SharePoint document libraries

To bulk delete a single student's data, before removing the student from the classes they're part of, run the script and provide the userId . If the student has been removed from the site, either the admin can add the student back to the class before running the script, or the admin can provide the userId and the classId that the student was ever a part of.

Providing a ClassId will allow the admin to only delete information about the student from a specific class.

Since an assignment's data for a teacher is shared across the class, there's no bulk delete option. Instead the admin can add themselves to the class, go to the app, and delete the assignment.

For more information, see Configure assignments for Teams .

Removing Assignments and Grades

You can also use Teams policies to remove Assignments and Grades for a specific user or for your entire tenant.

To remove Assignments and Grades for an individual user, go to Teams Admin Center and navigate to Teams apps > Permission policies to create a new app permission policy definition. When creating the new policy definition, set the Microsoft apps policy to Block specific apps and allow all others and add Assignments and Grades to the list of blocked applications. Once your new policy definition is saved, assign it to the appropriate users.

To remove Assignments and Grades for your entire tenant, go to Teams Admin Center , navigate to Teams apps > Manage apps , and search for and select Assignments and Grades from the application list. Change the status setting within the applications' settings page to Blocked .

Assignments diagnostic tool for users

Microsoft Support has created a tool to collect diagnostic data for the Microsoft engineering team to investigate issues related to the Assignments feature.

This tool can be accessed inside of Assignments on any screen the users experience an issue.

To pull up the diagnostic tool in Teams, users can:

• Select Ctrl+/
• Touch the screen with two fingers and rotate fingers 45 degrees, or
• Tap on the screen with three fingers for 15 seconds

Once the diagnostic tool pops up, users will see a list of data that may be needed by Microsoft technical support.

The data pulled may include:

• Assignment ID
• Submission ID

This data isn't automatically sent to Microsoft. Users need to copy and paste the data to a Microsoft support agent regarding a support ticket.

If a user pulls up the diagnostic tool then closes it, no data is sent.

When the data is sent to a Microsoft support agent, it's handled as Support Data under your organization's Microsoft 365 service agreements.

For instructions on using this diagnostic tool that you can share with educators and students, see Get diagnostic data to troubleshoot Assignments .

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Additional resources

Create an assignment in Microsoft Teams

Create  assignments for your students in Microsoft Teams for Education . Manage assignment timelines, add instructions, create resources to turn in, and more.

Note:  Assignments is only available in class teams . You can assign assignments to classes of up to 1000 students. Classes larger than 300 can't use a Class Notebook or Makecode.

In this article

Create a new assignment, title and category, instructions and attachments.

Points, rubrics, and grading

Assigning to students or groups

Due dates and scheduling, assign, save, or discard, classwork modules.

Navigating the Grades tab

Navigate to the desired class team, then select Assignments .

Select Create >   New   Assignment .

At a minimum, you must give the assignment a title. This is required. You can optionally add a tag, which will make this assignment easier to search for in the future. 

Assignments only supports the following image file types: .png, .jpeg, and .gif. 

On mobile, Images will resize to the screen. 

On desktop, you can use sizing handles on images to resize them.  

You can also attach existing files, links, or assignment integrations and create and name a new file right from here for students to turn in.

Note:  You can add up to five files for students to edit. The total number of resources you can add to an assignment is 10, whether editable or non-editable. Read-only reference files can be up to 500 MB in size. Files for students to edit can be up to 50 MB in size.

Select Attach  to attach resources to the assignment. Choose a file from your OneDrive, upload a file from your device, or choose one of the other options set by your admin, such as MakeCode.

Note:  If you're assigning a Class Notebook page, check what version of OneNote your students are using to ensure that their assignment pages will lock after the assignment due date passes.

Select +New  to create a blank Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), or Whiteboard document, or a new video recording to hand out to your students.

Select  Apps  to attach content from an app to the assignment. Admins can  manage Teams apps in the Microsoft Teams admin center .

Select Learning Accelerators  to add Reading Progress , Search Progress and other Learning Accelerators to the Assignment.

By default, Students can't edit  attached documents, meaning the document is read-only. This is a great option for reference materials.

Note:  If you have older documents with the file extension .doc, .xls, or .ppt, students won't be able to edit them. You can either attach them as read-only reference material or create a new file in Teams, copy in the old content, and save it. All new files you create in Teams or other Microsoft 365 apps will have the correct extension.

The Assign to field is where you choose the class for this assignment. By default, the class team you are in will be selected. 

Multiclass Publish

Multiclass publish allows educators to create an assignment for multiple classes with the same due date. 

Do this by navigating to the Assign to field and check the boxes for classes the assignment will be published to. 

Points and rubrics

You can select which grading scheme,  grading categories , and points the assignment is worth. 

If you have configured the class to use Grading Categories, you need to select a Grading Category for assignment with points.

Select the amount of points this assignment is worth, if any. You can use points on any number-based scale including whole numbers of 100 and set your own denominator. Examples:  88/100 or decimals 3.7/4.0.

Select  Add rubric  to  create a rubric .

Select  Manage grading categories  to create or edit the grading categories for the class.

Setting up Grading Schemes

Letter grading and grading categories must be set as a Grading Scheme in the Grade settings section to display these options.

2. Navigate down to Grade settings .

3. Choose Add Schemes or  Manage schemes .

Note:  If no other grading schemes other than "Points" have been set, this link will read  Add Schemes . Once you have gone through the steps to add a new scheme, the link will change to  Manage schemes. 

5. Set the grading levels. Letter grades will be the normal A, B, C, D, F, scheme. Ensure that there are enough levels to cover the entire 0-100 percent range.

6. Select the Save button when complete. 

Finish by choosing the  Done  button. 

Choose multiple classes, individual students, or groups of students  in one class to assign to.

By default, only students who are in your class now will receive this assignment. Change this by selecting an option from the dropdown menu.

Note:  If you choose a close date, any student who joins will receive this assignment until the close date.

Select a time and date for the assignment to be due. To schedule an assignment, next to  Assignment will post immediately with late turn-ins allowed  select Edit assignment timeline . Here, you can customize when your assignment will be posted to students and when it will close for turn-ins. By default, no close date will be selected, which allows students to turn in assignments late.

Note: If you choose multiple classes to publish the assignment to, you can select Set due date per class to set individual schedule , due and close date for each class

You can choose whether to add this assignment to your calendar on Outlook, students' calendars, and other educators or staff in your class team. Set this preference for all assignments in Assignments Settings .

Next to Add assignment to calendars , select the dropdown and pick one of the following options:

Students only  adds the assignment to just student calendars.

Students and me adds the assignment to both student calendars and your calendar.

Students and team owners to adds the assignment to both student and other educators or staff in the class team calendars.

Choose the channel where you'd like notifications for this assignment to post. This allows you to keep student work and discussion organized by unit, topic, or subject. By default, assignments will be posted in the General channel or your selection in Assignments Settings.

To choose a channel to post in, next to Post assignment notifications to:  select the down arrow for a list of available channels. 

Pick the channel you’d like this assignment notification to post in, your selection will be applied immediately.

To post assignment notifications to a channel, make sure bot posting is enabled. You can check that here  or ask your IT Admin for help.

Assignments will post to channels that are visible to all students. Private channels will not appear during this step.

If you have selected multiple classes, select Set per Class to set which channel to use or just use the General channel. Assignments to individual students do not post to channels.

When you're ready, you can finish the process of creating your new assignment by assigning it to students.

Note:  If your school uses Turnitin, you can sync assignment turn-ins to Turnitin .

Assign  will immediately publish the assignment and your students will be notified of the new assignment on the day you specified and the notification linking to this assignment will post in the channel you selected. They'll also have an entry on their Teams and Outlooks calendars if you've selected that option.

Save  will save a draft of the assignment. Students will not receive any notification, and nothing will be added to any calendar. 

Discard  will delete the draft of the assignment. Students will not receive any notification, and nothing will be added to any calendar. 

Create a New Module

1. Navigate to the desired Class Team, then select Classwork.

2. Select Add module. 

3. Enter a title for the new module.

4. Optionally, enter a description.

5. Select Save to save the module as a draft.

Note: Draft modules are only visible to Team owners (teachers) until published. All new modules are created in draft states. 

Learn more about managing classwork modules in Microsoft Teams.

Navigate the Grades tab

To open the Grades tab, navigate to your desired class team and select Grades .

You'll see that students appear in a column, with their assignments in a row next to their name. Assignments are listed in order by due date with the nearest date at the beginning. 

Learn more about the Grades tab. 

Create a group assignment

Edit an assignment

Save an assignment as a draft

Grade, return, and reassign assignments

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Task Management in Microsoft 365

Ashley Jolman, CSM

Microsoft 365 has a lot of task management tools, and it's not always clear which you might want to use in which scenario.

We'll give you an overview of each and talk about why you might use one over the other so you can keep track of your tasks and prevent them from falling through the cracks.

Task Management in M365

Effective task management keeps us focused and productive, no matter which app or device we are working on. With the expansion of apps for both communication and collaboration, the need for a convenient place to view all your tasks has become critical.

Task management in Microsoft 365 revolves around 2 main tools, To Do and Planner. Microsoft Lists is a newer app that has task management capabilities, but its best use is in more specific use-cases which I’ll get into below. All three of these apps have integration capabilities with Microsoft Teams, but only To Do and Planner shows up in the Teams’ Tasks app. This integration is important because if your workflow is in Microsoft Teams, all your tasks are centralized in one place, even if those tasks originate in multiple places. Which tool you use will depend on a few things, such as if the tasks are private or within a group, or where you’d like them displayed to best suit your workflow and preferences.  

Microsoft To Do

Microsoft To Do lists all your tasks in a central spot. It is available on the web, or through the app (both mobile and desktop). It is very user-friendly and therefore great for when you are on the go. It is aimed at individual task management, covering both personal and professional tasks. To Do is great for granular task management and therefore is a tool you would use on a day-to-day basis. It helps build your personal schedule which is easily referenced on the “My Day” and “Important” tabs in the main navigation menu.  

Additionally, To Do is available via the tasks section of Outlook (replaces Outlook Tasks). If you flag an email in Outlook, it is easily referenced from the “Flagged email” tab on the navigation bar of the To Do app. Microsoft To Do also allows you to check tasks assigned to you from Planner, simply click the “assigned to you” tab on the menu and you’ll view all the tasks assigned to you in Planner along with which project those tasks are associated with:

Viewing all your tasks in a large integrated list can be intimidating. Personally, I like to review my tasks from both my personal tasks lists as well as flagged emails and the tasks assigned to me and add the most important ones to the “My Day” tab. Simply right-click the critical task, and select “Add to My Day.”

This way I have clear priorities for the day by simply viewing the “My Day” tab. The curated tasks for this tab keep me on top of my priorities and feels more achievable than viewing the full list. Plus, if I happen to complete them, I can easily access my full tasks lists to gather my next priorities.

Microsoft Planner

Microsoft planner addresses the need for group task management. If you are working with a team and need improved task organization and management, Planner is a great tool. Planner is a lightweight project management tool based on visual Kanban Boards for task management and organization. Project Boards in Microsoft Planner are built on Office 365 groups, and permissions are inherited from the assigned group. If you wish to use Planner for personal task management, you do have the ability to create a board that is not associated with a group. Each task is represented by a card on the board which can display a variety of information including the task owner, description, due date, label, and status. Cards are organized into columns which you can label however works best for the team or project you’re working on.

Planner provides different views of the task board to best provide at-a-glance information. You can view your board as a calendar, or also via status charts such as this status tracker:

Fast, visual stats are one of Planner’s most useful features. You can instantly view status by task or by person, or total tasks by priority. Another benefit of Planner is that it integrates nicely with Teams. You can add Planner as a tab on your channel and edit from there. This is an excellent feature for groups who are using a Teams channel to discuss a project, share files, and with Planner, manage tasks.

Overall, Planner is a great task management tool that addresses the need for basic tasks or project management. The pitfalls of Planner are that it doesn’t centralize your tasks from other M365 products, and therefore doesn’t display tasks from another source such as Lists or To Do.

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Find out in just 2 minutes., microsoft lists.

Microsoft Lists is an app that helps you track information and organize work by using a flattened site structure, primarily a list view for items and tasks. Lists provides a fully customizable experience where you can edit the task fields, their layout, how they are viewed, and more. Data from Lists are stored in the associated SharePoint team site, and by default, inherits permissions from that site. When creating a new list, you have the option of saving it for personal use or to an existing SharePoint site.  

Lists provide several ready-to-use templates to get started from. These templates are a great resource to review potential use cases. Microsoft Lists is usually referenced as a task management tool, and it does include templates for this purpose, but its best use is in the management of items that aren’t really tasks. This includes things like inventory tracking, asset management, a checklist, or an itinerary.

Like Planner, Microsoft Lists integrates seamlessly with teams by adding the “Lists” app to a tab at the top of your channel. From there, you can create a new list or display a list you have already created. Also, similarly to Planner, Lists lacks the ability to integrate with the other task management tools, and therefore will not show your assigned tasks from other apps. However, Microsoft Lists is unique in that it integrates well with the Power Platform apps. This integration makes Lists a desirable choice if you’re going to design and build productivity apps.

Tasks in Microsoft Teams

A recent addition to Microsoft Teams is the Tasks app – a central listing of your tasks in the main Teams navigation bar. As Microsoft Teams becomes the hub for work, Tasks in Teams can easily become an essential part of your day-to-day. If a lot of your work can be done without leaving the Teams app, Tasks is likely the best choice for your task management. Tasks in Teams, which I will just refer to as Tasks, is a tool to provide a central listing of your tasks within Microsoft 365. It allows you to view from both To Do and Planner. It organizes those tasks by project and deliverable, instead of just showing a large, combined list.

Tasks allow you to edit multiple tasks at once, so edits such as a change in priority or due date can be updated simultaneously amongst multiple tasks. You can create task lists within the Tasks app, and those will appear in To Do. Tasks can also be added as a tab within a Teams channel. Any Tasks tab that’s added to a channel also appears in Planner.  

Tasks are great for big-picture task management, it provides an integrated experience for managing both your personal and group tasks. The exception being that Tasks do not integrate your tasks from Microsoft Lists. However, Lists are easily viewable via the tabs in any channel, so you still have quick access without leaving Teams.

As Microsoft makes strides to improving the overall modern workplace experience, it has become clear that Teams will be used to achieve their vision. Having Tasks provide a unified task experience within the Teams app is invaluable. I suspect it will continue to improve as it becomes the primary go-to hub for people to view all individual and team tasks.

At the end of the day, the best task management tool is the one you and your team will use. If you’re still unsure of which one to use, make sure you experiment with each and see which best suits your needs. You can also take advantage of the available templates to review use cases. All the tools discussed today are cloud-based and operate seamlessly across your various devices. Task management is the key to an efficient and effective workflow, so take advantage of Microsoft’s options to find what works best for you.

Recommended Reading

Optimizing project management: the benefits of using planner and loop, 5 productivity hacks with m365: a project manager's guide, make the most of group training with microsoft teams, whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways we can help you:.

• Total Communication Reset: Our Total Communication Reset will improve team communication and boost productivity in just 20 days.
• Join Our Membership Community: Join leaders and tech innovators on a journey to transform their workplace.
• Project-Based Services: Engage a dedicated team on a project basis to drive impactful outcomes and achieve your business goals.

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