Collaboration with groups has been a selling point for Google Docs for years, and Microsoft has adopted many of the same features for its Microsoft 365 applications. You can already leave comments in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents for other people to read, but now Microsoft is adding more advanced task management to comment threads.
The latest versions of PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, and the web include the ability to create, assign, and resolve tasks without leaving PowerPoint. When you’re adding a comment (from Insert> Comment), you can tag someone with the @ character, and a new “Assign to” checkbox will appear. The task can then be marked as resolved, or deleted entirely.
Microsoft said in a blog post, “Collaborating with others on your slides is often required to get your content ready to be shared and presented. Using tasks, you can stay organized, save time, and avoid confusion over what needs to be done, by whom, and when.” The company is also planning to add due dates, titles, and an option to assign multiple people.
In theory, the built-in task management might save you from having to send a message to someone in a chat or use an external tool or service. Microsoft itself already has a few different options there, from the simpler Microsoft To Do to the more complex Microsoft Lists. The latter service competes more with project management tools Asana and Trello, while PowerPoint’s new feature is much more basic.
The new functionality is probably intended more for corporate Microsoft 365 customers than home subscribers, since you would be able to tag and assign tasks to anyone at the company or organization. Microsoft 365 Business subscribers already have a centralized task list, which shows comments and other pending notifications from Teams, Outlook, To Do, Planner, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The new tasks in PowerPoint should feed into that page, giving you one unified place to see everything that needs your attention.
The new tasks feature is available in PowerPoint for Windows version 2212 (Build 16026.20084) or later, PowerPoint for Mac version 16.69 (Build 23010700) or later, and the regular PowerPoint web app.
Source: Microsoft 365 Insider