Find assigned tasks from Google Drive
![](/assets/img/ghost//2022/10/blog-post-assigned-tasks.png)
At Mozilla, we write a lot of documents. It enables us to work efficiently while having the team spread across the world. We do a lot of work through docs but also keep extensive notes about every meeting. And in these meeting notes, we assign tasks to members with the built-in mechanic.
With many tasks spread out across different documents, it's hard to keep track of them manually. Luckily, Google Drive has a search option for open assigned tasks and since I've now googled it three times because I always forgot, I'm sharing it on the blog for my and your benefit.
Assigning tasks
![Screenshot from Google Doc with an unchecked checkbox with label "Write this blog post" highlighted. Next to it, three buttons: blue plus, yellow smiley face and green pen. Next to that, an open modal with user Juha-Matti Santala assigning the task to juhamattisantala@gmail.com](/assets/img/ghost//2022/10/assign-task-in-google-doc.jpg)
To assign things to people, you can leave a comment by highlighting any text, in this case a checkbox label and clicking the blue + icon that adds a comment. Inside the comment, you can tag the user with @[their email]. If you select the "Assign to [name]" box, it will be assigned to them, otherwise they just get a notification.
Finding your tasks
![Screenshot of Google Drive with search query followup:actionitems returning one document named "Example doc for open..." with a grey badge with number 1 on top right corner of that document.](/assets/img/ghost//2022/10/followup-actionitems.jpg)
To find your open assigned tasks, you need to perform a Google Drive search with query followup:actionitems
. To perform that search, you can copy-paste that into your Google Drive search field or click this link.
It will show all the documents and on top right corner of each document, show a badge with number of open tasks.
For me, learning about this was such a life saver as I don't have to worry about forgetting those tasks anymore. I can start each day or week by going through all open ones, close the ones I've already completed and adjust my todo list based on them.