HLS Show Me How - Move Planner Across Teams

Michael Sampson I think there are many organizations that are hoping for plan templates, which might help with your concern about copying a plan across groups.  Last year at Ignite the Planner team mentioned they had that on their roadmap, so hopefully in a couple weeks at Ignite we'll get an update on their progress.   https://youtu.be/DKsyIj4vYwM?t=2227

The problem for us with the above is the connectivity.  This website trick works, but it is NOT copying and making a new plan for another team to use.  It is copying the same plan and it is linked back to the original, so anytime anyone on any of the teams makes an update or a change to any of the tasks within the original plan (or the new copied version of the plan for that matter) the updates appear everywhere that the plan now exists.  The copied plan is not independent of the original like what most of us are used to when we copy a file and rename it somewhere else to reuse. 

What would really help me / my team internally is having this ability to copy but to NOT have it linked back to the original.  I want to create a template and be able to copy it multiple times to different teams and have them function separate from the original, have the ability for each of them to be modified in the different environments, etc.   I think this is the common complaint from most people here and from what I have seen in most online forums.  Really surprised that this functionality doesn't exist as it seems like it would be a basic feature.

MichaelGannotti I am a very new user to Planner and have been told to use this project management software by my company. Until now I have been using Asana. Asana has all the features your users have been asking for since they are a VERY important need in project and team management. These features are:

1. Template creation - This feature has been asked for for over 6 years by thousands of users?  Why does your company not listen?

2. Timeline structure on the template created - This way you can set a Start or End Date when coping a template and all the tasks inside the project will adjust based on the template timeline created. In Asana this was VERY useful for us to repeat templates for an event that will all have the same tasks to create and each task will be assigned to the same members. Then the due dates just alter themselves based on the Start or End Date supplied.

3. Reassign existing Plans (or project) to different teams - Why is this not added yet when it has been requested by your users on this forum for over 5 years or more from what I am seeing.

4. Grouping of Plans into Teams within the Planner sidebar - Right now I have more than a dozen Plans in 4 different teams. If it wasn't for the logo we added to each team it would be hard to distinguish what Plan goes with what Team.  Please add the ability to see your Teams in the side bar and the Plans within those Teams should be grouped.  If I click on a Team, then list just the Plans for that Team. Again, I am not sure why this would not be a feature already since this why we make separate Teams to begin with in the Teams app.

I have been a project manager for over 2 decades and your software is lacking the basic features we as Planners need when managing large teams with numerous Projects.  Please listen to your users, especially after the same requests have been asked for over and over and over again.

I just checked your Roadmap URL that you supplied and these important features Planners need and ask for are not even on your softwares radar after all this time. Why?

Hi MichaelGannotti, long time no talk. Hope you are well.

I'm glad you mentioned the big proviso to the hack above - that of permissions. If the link is to a public plan, then no great problem. But if it is to a private plan, it could get squishy. What's your recommendation for how to provide permissions to a non-public plan, and do you have a sense if the Planner product team is working on the ability to migrate a plan across Office 365 groups?

I would have to say I agree with Ryan_H615 above.  I would think you could put some functionality into planner to make it a bit more flexible and portable from team to team.  I will remain hopeful that some work is put into evolving the tool.

StephenSun 

Here's what I'm now doing.

1. If necessary, create the Channel I need in the Team to which I want to move the Plan
2. Use the web version of Planner to copy the Plan from it's original Channel (and Team) to the "Group" (yes: in web Planner, it calls it "Group", not "Team"); giving it a name better than "Copy of <original Plan name>"
3. Go to the Channel in the Teams application where I want the Plan, and use the add app function to add the "Tasks by Planner and To do" app, and the choose "Use an existing plan from this team" option. Select the copied (and potentially renamed) plan from the drop-down list.
4. Go back to the original location for the Plan and delete it.

Absolutely Michael Sampson. If a non public plan then you would need to set the permissions accordingly for the plan being shared. Not ideal but for now would at least give you access across one or more additional Teams. As to whether the Planner team is looking at ability to migrate across Groups/Teams as there is nothing published I really can't comment on it. If a customer of mine has such questions I could discuss with them what may or may not be being looked at as well as connect them to the team directly to discuss. But not at liberty to comment one way or another in this setting.

Thanks for the answer MichaelGannotti; here's hoping we see some more goodness in this space shortly. EricDavisTech - agreed. Templates would be great for Planner.

Ryan_H615  I hear you and and those would be great suggestions for the Product Group. You can post those Microsoft User Voice so that the product team sees the request directly. You can post here https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum and https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/