Forum Discussion
Office 365 - Beyond absurd....
Office 365
All I wanted was a simple planning app that could help organize my project.
I buy office 365 Business Premium, signup for a free domain, setup a new email and install the ‘Outlook’ mobile app for the project everything runs smoothly, I launch ‘Planner’, and this is where things start to change.
I create a new task, but it only allows a ‘Due Date’ you can’t set a specific time for this task to be completed?!! And these tasks don’t have an option to display on my Outlook calendar? This planner has no file organizer to upload project files. Ok well this won’t work, having installed Office 365 I notice ‘Teams’ keeps popping up and maybe there is a solution in there.
I create a new Team and link it with the Planner plan I already created. There is an option in ‘Teams’ to add meetings but this meeting calendar only allows you to view one week in advance!!?! Teams has a file organizer great, but you can’t create folders or upload files from your mobile device??!!!?
‘Sharepoint’ is suggested as a file sharing portal, I link the Sharepoint to my Team but when you upload a file both online and on the mobile app you can’t upload to a specific folder or move the uploaded file to a specific folder, this won’t work!!!??
I install ‘OneDrive’ and this now lets me create folders and upload files, but I can’t link OneDrive to my Team site so I use the add weblink workaround to add the OneDrive folder to my team, I now have 5 Office 365 apps on my phone Outlook, Planner, Teams, Sharepoint and OneDrive.
It’s a little confusing trying to go form each app to do a specific task that I though was to be all combined into the Teams app, I need a calendar for this project the Teams ‘’Meetings’ calendar isn’t sufficient as explained earlier. I go to Sharepoint and add a calendar to SharePoint copy the link and add a new ‘Website’ to my ‘Team’ using this calendar link. Success I now have a calendar but when I try to open this link on my mobile device it won’t work!!!???,
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Calendar-in-Teams/td-p/189986
Wait I have Outlook app on my phone perhaps I can add the Calendar there….. Go to calendar on my phone settings add Shared Calendar, select the Group Calendar that I want but it says, ‘Can’t Add Calendar, You can’t open Groups calendars at this time.’!!!!????
Even using the Web App for Outlook and Calendar I can’t find a way to view this group calendar, using the web app means I’m now using my web browser app so that’s 6 apps in total to plan a simple project!!!???!!!???!!!???
I have been experimenting with the Flow app to see if my tasks in planner can be turned into calendar New Appointments or Meetings but really at this stage is this what you would expect from a Microsoft product, 7 Apps later!!!??? If someone could point me in the right direction as to what I’m doing wrong to get a simple project planner with file storage working, then I would greatly appreciate it… Thanks in advance….
- Thank you for posting this. 70% of the workforce is untethered (according to a recent study by Deloitte). Microsoft needs to shift their thinking on collaboration tools - mobile first.
For me, I’ve been traveling without my laptop and have had to ask someone else on my team to upload files to specific team spaces. It’s frustrating that I can’t do this myself.- Hi I have a similar problem doing research work it's always suitable to take my laptop for what ever reason; so I have ask someone to check my files for any new messages and appropriate reply to the said message, it would a lot more suitable outward thinking to collaboration a set of tools suitable and sufficient for mobile 📱 at times i get totally frustrated with myself unable to simple jobs because I haven't my laptop with me owning to the circumstances of the research work at the time., thank you.
- I do files all the time on the road via mobile. Utilize onedrive you can move files from it to Teams attached sharepoint locations etc.
- You can do it all from Teams using Desktop App, if you are staying mobile world then you need the different apps. To be honest, almost all the different project management tools I've used recently don't have sync to calendar functions so you are kind of trying to use a feature that isn't really done up well in a lot of places. When it comes to Office 365 thou and using the group model, the calendar is a place that needs serious overhaul since it's only really good for a central calendar when using groups which the minority use anymore.
It's even more glaring when it comes to mobile. Planner app doesn't have the calendar view etc. You honestly might be better served looking for something more purpose built for a little bit past simple project management since IMO Office 365 isn't the best tool for just that.- These are basic and very simple features to have on any software. If I was the CEO of that company and this is the best they can put together I’d either suspect sabotage or absolute incompetence. The Microsoft programmers have the ability to fix these anomalies that many people are asking to be fixed some of them for years.
Offline mode doesn’t work on these apps and that’s ridiculous, one of the main reasons people choose MS Outlook is it’s ability to work offline.
