Working with Assigned Tasks

Working with assigned tasks, whether you are the person doing the assigning or the person accepting the assignment, can be a bit confusing. After you understand it, however, I think you’ll find the tool very useful.

Receiving a task assignment

When someone sends you a task assignment, you receive an e-mail message that looks as shown in Figure 30-30. There are three buttons of importance on the Task tab of the Ribbon in the message window:

• Accept: Accepts the assignment, adds it to your Task list, and notifies the person who sent you the assignment that you have accepted.

• Decline: Declines the assignment and notifies the person who sent you the assignment that you have declined.

• Assign Task: Lets you assign the task to a third person, who will receive the same notification and can accept, decline, or assign the task to yet another person. The person who originally assigned the task to you will be notified of the reassignment.

Receiving accept/decline notifications

When you send a task assignment to someone, one of three things will happen (assuming that the assignment is not simply ignored!):

• First, the person may accept the task. You receive a message to that effect, and the task is automatically updated to reflect that the task was accepted and is now owned by that person.

  About Task Ownership Atask has, at any given moment, one and only one owner. Owning a task means that you can assign it to someone else. Here’s how ownership works: When you create a task, you are the original owner. When you assign the task to someone, that person becomes the temporary owner. The person who receives the assignment can do one of three things: (1) accept the task and become the owner; (2) decline the task and return ownership to you; or (3) assign the task to a third person, who then becomes the temporary owner. If you assign a task to someone and that person declines, ownership passes back to you only when you reclaim ownership by returning the task to your task list. It does not happen automatically.

  
  

• Second, the person may decline the task. You receive an e-mail notification. When you open this e-mail, you can take one of the following two actions by clicking the corresponding button on the toolbar:

  • Return the Task to Your Task List: You regain ownership of the task.

  • Assign Task: Assign the task to someone else.

• Finally, the person you assigned the task to may assign it to someone else. That person can accept, decline, or reassign the task.

Assigning a Task to Multiple People Although Outlook does not prevent you from assigning a task to two or more people, you cannot keep an updated copy of the task in your task list. For this reason, it is better to divide a multi-person task into parts and assign each part, as a separate task, to an individual person.

Task status reports

When you have accepted a task assignment, you own that task, and no one but you can change the task even though it may be on someone else’s task list. You can then, as you work on the task, open it and update the status and percentage completed of the task; you can also mark it as completed. When you do so and save the modified task, an update is sent to the person who assigned you the task (assuming that the Keep an Updated Copy of This Task on My Task List option was selected when you were sent the assignment). By default, this update does not appear in the task assigner’s Inbox but is processed automatically, and the updated information is available the next time the task assigner views the task.

Likewise, if the Send Me a Status Report When This Task Is Complete option was selected when you were sent the assignment, the person who assigned the task receives an automatic update when you mark the task as complete. Although Task Complete updates are processed automatically, they appear in the person’s Inbox.

A task can have more than one prior owner. Suppose, for example, that person A created the task and sent a task request to person B. Then, person B sent a task request to person C, who accepted the task. C is the owner of the task and both A and B are prior owners and will receive status updates.

Sending a status report manually

Sometimes you may want to manually send a status report or comments about a task. Here are two situations in which doing so might be desirable:

• The original task request (when you were assigned the task) did not include a request for automatic status updates.

• You were not assigned the task; it is simply a task that you created but want to keep other people updated about.

To manually send a status report, open the task and click the Send Status Report button in the Manage Task group of the Task tab of the Ribbon. Outlook creates an e-mail message with information about the task status in the body of the message. You can add text as needed. If the task was assigned to you, the To field already contains the addresses of the task’s prior owners. You can add additional recipients if desired.