Office 2007 Bible

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.

Figure 30-30. Receiving a task assignment from someone else.

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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 ...