How to upgrade your employees with these simple computer tricks

The Project Brief, Saturday, October 28, 6 min read.

Some functions on the Microsoft 365 suite may seem obvious to those with a long track record as a project manager, but when a new employee joins my team, I always make sure to show them these must haves.

They are real revelations for those who discover them.

The follow up function of the email service 

This function allows you to place a follow up on an email at the desired date and time. You can specify the date and time when you want your email service to remind you to process the email in question. From now on, no answer to give will be forgotten. 

1. To set or remove reminders, select the email message, contact, or task. 

2. On the Standard toolbar, click Follow Up , and then click Add Reminder. 

3. In the Custom dialog box, select or clear the Reminder check box. 

4. Tip: If Outlook is closed, reminders won’t pop up on the screen. 

The “tasks” function of the email service 

Many people keep a list of things to do — on paper, in a spreadsheet, or by using a combination of paper and electronic methods. In Outlook, you can combine your various lists into one list, enhanced with reminders and tracking. You can create tasks to be carried out later on the date and time chosen. I allow myself to place text telling me what needs to be done but also links, images of Teams conversations or files. In short, anything that can help me complete the task as quickly as possible. Using the same setting functions as an email alarm, you can also specify the date and time of the reminder to complete this task. 

1. Select New Items > Task or press Ctrl+Shift+K. 

2. In the Subject box, enter a name for the task. It’s best to keep the name short and then add the details in the task body. 

3. If there’s a fixed start or end date, set the Start date or Due date. 

4. Set the task’s priority by using Priority. 

5. If you want a pop-up reminder, check Reminder, and set the date and time. 

6. Click Task > Save & Close. 

Delayed sending of an email 

Outlook’s Delayed Send feature allows you to send an email at the date and time of your choosing. So you no longer have to send an email in the wee hours, letting everyone know that you were working when the majority were sleeping.  

In the message you are composing, click the Options tab. In the More Options group, click Delay Delivery. Under Delivery options, check the box for Do not deliver before and select a date and time.

And we must talk about One Note…  

Organize your notes 

I don’t want to take anything away from all those who use the good old notebook to write all their notes, but know that One Note exists and it’s up to you to use it to increase your power to remember everything, at all times. As long as you have an effective filing system that allows you to quickly find a specific element of a project.

For each of my projects, I use a classification tree based on the main phases of a project. These are my notebooks1 (see How to create a notebook in One Note, further): 

1. (Project name or number) – Project identification 

2. (Project name or number) – Project planning 

3. (Project name or number) – Project implementation 

4. (Project name or number) – Project closure 

Each notebook develops according to a series of sections (files) based on the main constituents of a project (see How to create a section in One Note, further) : 

1. (Project name or number) – Scope 

2. (Project name or number) – Schedule 

3. (Project name or number) – Budget 

4. (Project name or number) – Risks 

5. (Project name or number) – Lessons learned 

6. (Project name or number) – Communications 

7. (Project name or number) – Contracts

To complete the tree structure, create as many pages as you like within your sections (see How to create a page in One Note, further). Make sure you write a title that allows you to find what you're looking for rapidly, as pages accumulate quite fast and it can get chaotic pretty quickly.

I always create a main page for a given topic, into which I insert secondary pages. This is how it should look :

Topic 1

• Date - specific info about topic 1.

• Date - specific info about topic 1.

I soon discovered that writing down the project number for each page was useless and only made things more complicated.

Here's what the tree structure I've just explained looks like:

1. (Project name or number) – Project identification

   1. (Project name or number) – Scope 

   2. (Project name or number) – Schedule 

   3. (Project name or number) – Budget 

   4. (Project name or number) – Risks 

   5. (Project name or number) – Lessons learned 

   6. (Project name or number) – Communications 

   7. (Project name or number) – Contracts

      1. Contract 1

         1. Date - specific info about contract 1.

         2. Date - specific info about contract 1.

      2. Contract 2

         1. Date - specific info about contract 2.

         2. Date - specific info about contract 2.

Now, let’s see how you can create notebooks, sections and pages.

How to create a notebook in One Note

1. Open OneNote. 

2. Click the Show Notebooks button. 

3. At the bottom of the list that opens, click the + Notebook button. 

4. Type a name for the notebook in the Notebook Name box. 

5. Click Create Notebook. 

Start with a single notebook. You can create additional notebooks for different subjects or projects whenever you want. 

How to create a section in OneNote 

1. Open or create a notebook in which you want to create one or more section groups. 

2. Click New Section Group. 

3. Type a name for the section group and then press Enter.

How to create a page in One Note

1. Open or create a section in which you want to create one or more pages. 

2. Click New page. 

3. Type a name for the page and then press Enter.

And there’s more…

Here are some other tips in One Note and Outlook to help you get things done even faster.

Send notes by email  

The beauty of the 365 suite is that all of its apps talk to each other, which is why you can email your pages from One Note. Rather than copying and pasting your pages into an email, One Note’s automatic email feature does it for you, putting all of your notes into an email ready to send. 

1. On the OneNote page that has the notes you want to send, choose Home > Email Page. 

2. In the message window that opens, fill in the To, Cc, Bcc (if available), and Subject lines. 

3. Add any comments for the recipients of your notes, and then click Send. 

Save an email in One Note 

If you can create and send email from One Note in Outlook, you can also save email from Outlook in One Note. Before knowing this function, I pitifully copied and pasted the important elements of the email in a One Note file. Now, I can’t live without this function which not only allows you to save the entire email in the One note’s page of your choice, including the files attached to the email, but it tells you who the email was sent to, as well as the date and time of sending.

Select an email message, right-click it and select Save to OneNote. A dialog will pop up on the screen to choose an existing page or create a new one. Once you have done so, click Save, and you’ll see the entire email appears in your page. 

Save a meeting in One Note

You can also save the meetings that you organize or that you are invited to. You'll see the meeting subject, date, time, and all the people invited to the meeting! You can quickly confirm attendances by checking the box next to each person's name. It's an excellent starting point for writing the minutes that follow.

I am curious to read what you think about these tricks and if they can make a difference in your team like they did in mine. Use the comments section below and let's talk!