What is the conservation task?

If you create a task and assign it to someone, you lose the ability to edit the task. What's the best workaround? (Outlook 2010)

• Microsoft describes the design this way: "If the recipient accepts the task, that person becomes its permanent owner.... The owner is the only person who can make changes to the task. http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview14.aspx?AssetId=HA010355069&lcid=1033&NS=OUTLOOK&Version=14&tl=2&respos=0&CTT=1&queryid=6ede583e-1c4b-496c-a3f6-344967503575. My objection to Microsoft's design is that assignments change all the time, and sometimes it makes sense for the assignor to edit the task rather than the assignee.   When this question was posed by another user, the only answer was "Why not use a real project management application?"  http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/task-ownership-problem-t3759300.html. I hope that's not the best solution. The best workaround I can come up with when a task changes is to ask the assignee to delete the task and then send a new one. That's inefficient.   Is there a better workaround? I'd consider using a third-party add-in if necessary. I actually tried the CodeTwo Task Workflow add-in. http://www.codetwo.com/freeware/task-workflow/. It wasn't ideal because, although it allows the assignor to edit the task, the "status report" sent to inform the assignee of the edit doesn't list the "contact" the task is linked to, so the task isn't identified clearly enough for me. (In comparison, Outlook's "send status report" function does list the linked contact).   Your thoughts?

• Answer:

  I can't speak to whether there's a third-party add-in that will solve this problem for you.  There are a lot of add-ins for Outlook and I am quite frankly not up to date on them.  I do see a couple of possibilities that don't involve using an add-in. Copy the task you've already assigned and send it to the assignee as a replacement.  For example, the updated task would say something like "This is a replacement for "Task X".  Copying the task would save you the trouble of re-entering it and sending it as a replacement would save you sending the assignee a message asking them to delete the first version.  It's not as efficient as being able to update the existing task, but it is a little more efficient than the process you outlined above. Employ a bit of scripting to make updating possible.  You'd actually need two scripts, one at your end to capture and send the updates and one at the assignee's end to process the updates as they arrived.  Updates would be in the form of a specially formatted message that would be read and processed automatically by the script at the assignee's end.  Conceptually it's pretty simple.  The script at your end would look for changes to tasks you've assigned.  When it sees one it would capture the changes, write them to an email, and send that email to the assignee.  The script at the assignee's end would intercept the change message and apply the changes to the assignee's copy of the task.  It would be as if the assignee had made the changes.