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Introducing recurring tasks and grid features in Planner

PlannerTeam's avatar
PlannerTeam
Iron Contributor
Jan 10, 2023

We’re excited to share that the Recurring Tasks and Grid features have now launched in Planner!  

 

Recurring Tasks 

You can reduce extra work by easily setting up automatic repeating tasks for daily, weekly, or monthly recurrence – and many other interval options – with custom repeat settings. This feature was highly requested by our users, and we greatly appreciate the feedback!

 

Some examples where this may come in handy include: 

  • Monthly report 
  • Weekly progress review 
  • Daily scrum meeting 
  • Quarterly Planning 
  • Yearly Review and Planning 

Specify task recurrence 

  1. In Board view, select the task card to view its Details panel.  
  2. Set task timing parameters using the Start date and Due date fields.  
  3. Select the adjacent Repeat field to open the Repeat menu and choose a recurrence interval: Daily, Weekdays (M-F), Weekly, Monthly or Yearly.  
  4. Optionally select Custom to open the Custom repeat pane. Explore and select from a range of options, including Day/Week/Month/Year, specific Weekdays, specific Month date, and Yearly due date, etc. 


 

FAQ: 

 

Q: I don’t see all the future occurrences of my task, is this normal? 

A: Yes! You will only have one active occurrence of a task at any point of time. The next occurrence will be created once the current one is marked as complete. If you wish to see future occurrences, you can navigate to the Schedule view to see project future tasks.  

 

Q: What happens if I remove the due date on a task? 

A: Your task will no longer be recurring.  

 

Q: What happens if I delete the active recurring task? 

A: You will be asked whether you want to delete just the active task or all future tasks in the series as well. 

 

Read up more on the feature here: Recurring tasks in Planner - Microsoft Support 

 

Grid View 

You can view your tasks in a convenient list using the new Grid view. This view enhances the way you interact with and understand the tasks that make up your plan, allowing you to easily add new tasks, make quick edits, and see more details about each item without the need to open individual task details. 

 

The Grid view is available within any plan as well as the Assigned to Me tab, which gives you a single place to view all tasks that are assigned to you across all of your plans. 

 

To get to the Grid view, simply select Grid at the top of your plan or Assigned to Me view. Here you can:

 

  • Click on any cell to change its value 
  • Select Add new task at the bottom of the grid to input information and hit Enter to create the task 
  • Check the circle to the left of any task to mark it complete 
  • Select Filter in the top right corner to filter by keyword, due date, priority, progress, labels, bucket, or assignment.  
  • Select the Open Details button on a task’s title cell to open the task details pane and see more information about any task 
  • Right-click or select the More Options button to perform other actions on a task, such as delete and copy link  

 

We'd love to hear your thoughts on other ways we can help you and your team organize and stay on top of work in Planner. Please feel free to post a comment below or submit any feedback directly through our feedback portal. And keep visiting our Tech Community Blog for all the latest Planner news. 

 

Updated Jan 10, 2023
Version 1.0

31 Comments

  • noama1320's avatar
    noama1320
    Copper Contributor

    Would be nice to also have flitter for custom dates, "This month" "Next month"

  • JohnM_PDZA's avatar
    JohnM_PDZA
    Copper Contributor

    Is there a timeline for this to be rolled out for clients on GCC tenants?

  • brianthuesen's avatar
    brianthuesen
    Copper Contributor

    Great additions. But...

     

    ...to use this in a work environment, you need two things. 1. Many tasks takes place on the x'th business day of the month/quarter/year. This needs to be an option to. Right now I can pick the third Thursday of the month, but not the third business day. 2. I need to be able to set up my own business days calendar. So if a country or business has special business days, you need to be able to adjust to that.

     

    Hope to see this small amendment soon!

     

  • Lennard80's avatar
    Lennard80
    Brass Contributor

    Great new additions, but it would be more urgent to solve this: Recycle Bin or versioning as RH stated. Already had a user with Owner role who accidently deleted an all open taks in a bucket. Since this is so easy to do a delete, a recover option (like CTRL-Z) would cover mistakes use case. And integrate it by default with Outlook Calendar. 

  • -_RH_-'s avatar
    -_RH_-
    Iron Contributor

    Great, but we can't use Planner for anything substantive without a Recycle Bin or versioning or at least something that allows recovery. Right now, if someone inadvertently (or intentionally) deletes a bucket, it's just gone. This has been on the request list since at least 2018 (RIP UserVoice). When is it coming?

  • wroot's avatar
    wroot
    Silver Contributor

    Hopefully recurring tasks are implemented better than in To Do. I still can't understand how to use them there and why it must have a Due date if i need to run it daily. I set due date next week and set it to daily and it only appears for next week. If i set due date today and set repeat daily it doesn't appear next day. Mind boggling.

  • Really happy about the recurring tasks feature. Now I was able to finally move some specific, periodic tasks like monthly client billings, into Planner and have a more complete project view there. This makes Planner feature-complete in fundamentals. Phew, I admit the pace of development isn't very satisfying, but at least we've got here and that's a relief.

     

    One missing piece I see is that the Plan view that sit embedded in SharePoint Team sites (as part of an O365 Group) haven't got the updated UI and doesn't show the recurring tasks UI. Hope that follows soon.

  • Grid view is a good start but here are a few suggestions:

     

    1. Add sort or filter actions on the displayed columns;
    2. Allow selection of individual items and a select all command;
    3. Allow group operations on selected items (delete all; change status ou bucket..)

    Well, make it behave like SharePoint lists. It would be usefull.

     

    Thanks