How to View Tasks in Microsoft Teams (Complete Guide)

If you’ve been using Microsoft Teams for a while, you already know it’s way more than just a chat tool. One thing that trips up a lot of people is figuring out how to actually see their tasks without jumping between five different apps. You open Teams, you know there are tasks somewhere, but where exactly?

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through every method to view tasks in Microsoft Teams — whether they’re personal to-dos, tasks assigned to you by a manager, or shared team project tasks. By the end, you’ll know exactly where to look and how to make sense of it all.

A Quick Backstory: How Tasks Work in Teams

Microsoft Teams doesn’t have a single “task” feature — it has a few pieces that work together. Here’s what you need to know before diving in:

• Microsoft Planner — This is for team tasks. If your manager assigned you something inside a project board, it lives here.
• Microsoft To Do — This is for your personal tasks. Think of it like a digital to-do list just for you.
• The Planner App in Teams — This is where everything comes together. It shows both your personal To Do tasks and your Planner team tasks in one place. Before March 2024, this app was called Tasks by Planner and To Do.

Think of it like an inbox and a project board merged into one screen. Once you understand this, navigating tasks in Teams becomes a lot more straightforward. If you’re setting up a project from scratch, start with my guide on using Microsoft Teams for project management.

Method 1: Using the Planner App (The Best Way to See All Tasks)

This is hands-down the best starting point. The Planner app in Teams shows you all your tasks — personal and shared — without you having to dig into individual channels.

How to Open It

1. Look at the left sidebar in Microsoft Teams.
2. Click View more apps (the three dots …) in the left app bar.
3. Search for “Planner” in the search box.
4. Click on it to open the app. If it isn’t listed yet, select Apps, search for Planner, and select Add.

Pro tip: Right-click on the Planner icon after it loads and select “Pin”. This will keep it in your left sidebar permanently, so you don’t have to search for it every time.

What You’ll See Inside Planner

Once you’re in, the left panel has a few key sections:

• My Day — Tasks that are due today, plus any you’ve added to your focus list. It clears every night, so it’s great for daily planning.
• My Tasks — Everything assigned to you across all plans and projects. This is your go-to view.
• My Plans — All the Planner boards (shared project plans) you’re part of.

Method 2: Viewing “My Tasks” — All Your Assigned Tasks in One Place

Click on My Tasks in the Planner app, and you’ll get a consolidated view of everything that’s been assigned to you across the entire organization.

At the top, you can switch between four views:

• Private tasks — Quick personal tasks that don’t belong to any plan yet. You can move them into a plan later.
• Assigned to me — All tasks assigned to you from basic plans, premium plans, Teams meeting notes, Loop components, and shared To Do lists, regardless of which project they belong to.
• Flagged emails — Emails you’ve flagged in Outlook. You can jump back to the email from the task.
• All — Everything from the three views above in one list, which you can filter and sort.

This is really useful when you’re in multiple projects at once. Instead of opening each project channel individually, you just click “My Tasks” and see the full picture.

Switching Between Views

Inside My Tasks, you can switch between:

• Grid view — A row-by-row breakdown of your tasks with the source plan, due date, priority, and status. Use the Filter button to narrow it down.
• Board view — A Kanban-style layout. In My Tasks, the columns are grouped by status (Not started, In progress, Completed), and you can change that with Group by.

To switch views, just click Grid or Board at the top of the screen. The Calendar and Charts views live inside each plan, which I’ll cover next.

Method 3: Viewing Tasks in a Teams Channel (Planner Tab)

If your team uses Planner boards directly inside a Teams channel, here’s how to access them.

1. Open the Teams channel where the project is set up.
2. Look at the top of the channel — you’ll see a row of tabs like Posts, Shared (the channel’s files), etc.
3. If a Planner board has been added, you’ll see a Planner tab (it might be named after the project).
4. Click on it to open the board.

Inside the channel Planner tab, you’ll see all the tasks in that specific project. You can switch between the Grid, Board, Calendar, and Charts views here too. Not sure whether a project deserves its own team or just a channel? See Microsoft Teams team vs channel.

Filtering Tasks in the Channel Board

Let’s say there are 50 tasks on the board and you only want to see yours. Here’s what to do:

• Click the Filter icon (three stacked lines) next to the view buttons.
• Select Assignment, then search for and select your name.
• You’ll instantly see only the tasks that belong to you.

You can also filter by:

• Due date (overdue, this week, next week)
• Priority (urgent, important, medium, low)
• Labels (custom color labels your team has set up)
• Bucket (the column/category the task is in)
• Status, Goals, Start date, and Finish date

Method 4: Viewing Tasks Assigned to You from Chat Messages

This one is a hidden gem. If someone sent you a task request inside a Teams chat or channel message, you might not even realize it’s trackable.

Here’s how to see tasks created from messages:

1. In a Teams chat or channel, hover over a message.
2. Click the three dots (…) that appear on the message, then select More actions.
3. Select Create Planner task (some versions label it Create task).
4. Under Create in, pick Private tasks or one of your plans (and a bucket), assign it if you want, and save. You can also post a reply about the task so others can see it.

Once created, that task will show up in Planner under the plan you picked, or under My Tasks > Private tasks. You won’t lose track of it even if the chat gets buried. This is especially useful for action items that come out of a meeting conversation. Here’s how to get meeting minutes from Microsoft Teams so none of them slip.

Method 5: Viewing Tasks on Mobile (Teams App)

If you’re on the go, you can still see all your tasks through the Teams mobile app.

1. Open the Teams app on your phone.
2. Tap More in the bottom navigation bar.
3. Find and tap Planner (or search for it).
4. Tap My Tasks to see all your assigned and personal tasks.

The mobile view is clean and simple. You can mark tasks as complete, update progress, add notes, and change due dates — all from your phone. Just know that Planner on Teams mobile has fewer features than the desktop and web versions.

Method 6: Viewing Shared Team Plans

If you want to see the full project board (not just tasks assigned to you, but all tasks across the team), here’s how:

1. Go to Planner in the left sidebar.
2. Click on My Plans in the left pane.
3. You’ll see a list of all Planner boards you’re part of.
4. Click on any plan to open the full board. Use the Recent, Shared, Personal, Pinned, and Recommended filters (or search) to find the right one.

From here, you can see:

• All tasks in the project, regardless of who they’re assigned to.
• The progress of each task (Not Started, In Progress, Completed).
• Who’s responsible for what.
• Which tasks are overdue (they’ll be flagged in red).

If you’re a manager or team lead, this view is where you’ll spend most of your time — it gives you a bird’s eye view of the whole project without having to ask team members for status updates.

How to View Completed Tasks

By default, completed tasks are hidden. Here’s how to bring them back:

1. Open the Planner board (either from My Plans or a channel tab).
2. In the Board view, find the Completed tasks section under each bucket column. Click on it to expand it.
3. In the Grid view, click the Filter icon, select Status, and choose Completed.

Seeing completed tasks is handy when you want to review what’s been done on a project or when you accidentally marked something as complete and need to reopen it.

Sorting and Grouping Tasks

Once you’re viewing a Planner board, you have a lot of control over how tasks are displayed. In Board view, you can group tasks by:

• Bucket — The default columns or categories your team has set up (e.g., “To Do,” “In Progress,” “Done”).
• Assigned to — Groups tasks by team member, so you can quickly see each person’s workload.
• Status — Groups tasks by progress: Not started, In progress, Completed.
• Due date — Groups tasks by deadline.
• Priority — Groups tasks from Urgent down to Low.
• Labels — Groups by custom color labels.
• Start date and Goal — Groups by when work starts or by the plan goal it supports.

To change the grouping, click on Group by at the top right of the board and select your preferred option. In a channel tab, it’s the small list icon next to the help button.

Quick Tips to Make This Easier

Here are a few things I wish I knew earlier:

• Pin the Planner app to your sidebar so it’s always one click away.
• Use My Day to plan your morning — open a task, select More options (…) > Add to My day, so you have a focused list for the day. Tasks due today show up there automatically.
• If you use Microsoft To Do on your phone or desktop, your To Do lists sync automatically and appear in the Planner app under My Plans, and flagged Outlook emails land in My Tasks > Flagged emails. You don’t have to maintain two separate lists.
• Use Task chat — open any task in a plan and use the Task chat pane to @mention teammates. You can also select More options > Copy link to task and paste the link in a chat. This helps keep conversations connected to the actual work.
• If you’re assigned a task and want a nudge, open the task and set a Due date — on that day it shows up in My Day automatically.
• Check the Charts view before a weekly status meeting — it gives you an instant visual summary without needing to prep a separate report.

Wrapping Up

Viewing tasks in Microsoft Teams is all about knowing which app or section to go to. The Planner app’s My Tasks is your daily driver for seeing everything assigned to you. My Plans is where you go when you want to see the full project picture. And the Planner tab inside a channel is perfect when your team works out of a specific board.

Once you pin the Planner app to your sidebar and get comfortable with the different views — grid, board, calendar, and charts — managing tasks in Teams becomes a pretty smooth experience. It’s all in one place; you just need to know where to look.

A few more guides you might find useful:

• Setting up channels for a project? Here’s how to create a private channel in Teams.
• Want deadlines on a shared calendar too? Learn how to create a shared calendar in Microsoft Teams.
• Ready to automate task alerts? Start with these Power Automate Microsoft Teams tutorials.
• For a tidier workspace overall, check these Microsoft Teams best practices.