Noob question: VSCode/MSC++ Integration

I wonder if anyone can help me.

I've installed VSCode on my Windows machine and I have the Windows C++ dev tools installed (cl.exe, etc.), but when I try and build my CPP file I get errors in the terminal about not being able to find cl.exe (or if I add it to my path, not being able to find LIBCMT.lib).

I've googled around but most answers I find are telling me to open vscode from inside a Developer Command Prompt. I'd much rather be able to open VSCode from my taskbar and have it work.

Can anyone tell me what settings I need to configure for this to work? I would hope that there's some way to configure the build task to run inside the developer command prompt, or load the relevant environment variables before it runs?

Thanks!