Forum Discussion
Planner task comments no longer send email notifications – critical regression
This change removed a previously existing core functionality without providing an adequate replacement.
With the new Planner experience, task comments no longer trigger automatic email notifications to assigned users. This breaks a critical communication mechanism that many teams relied on for reliable task coordination.
As a result, assigned users are no longer consistently informed about updates, introducing a high risk of missed information and operational issues in day-to-day work.
There is currently no supported or enforceable alternative to ensure users are notified.
Previous behavior:
- Task comments triggered automatic email notifications
- Assigned users were reliably informed
- Communication was traceable and consistent
Current behavior:
- No automatic email notifications
- No configuration to restore this
- @mentions required (manual, error-prone, not enforceable)
Microsoft Support has confirmed that this is by design and cannot be reverted.
From an enterprise perspective, this is not just a design change, but a regression of critical functionality without an equivalent replacement.
Request:
Please restore automatic email notifications for task discussions or provide a reliable, enforceable alternative for notifying assigned users.
Question to the community:
How are you handling this change in real-world scenarios?
- Switching tools?
- Enforcing @mentions?
- Moving communication out of Planner?
Would appreciate hearing how others are dealing with this.
8 Replies
Hi JörgWR, you’ve accurately identified one of the most disruptive 'by design' changes in the recent Planner/Teams integration overhaul. Many enterprise teams are hitting this exact wall because it breaks the 'set and forget' notification workflow.
Since Microsoft has confirmed this is not reversible, most enterprise teams I work with have moved to one of these three strategies to restore functionality:
Strategy 1: Power Automate (The Recommended Fix): This is the most reliable 'enforceable' alternative. You can create a flow: 'When a comment is added to a Planner task -> Post message in Teams / Send Email'. It requires a one-time setup, but it acts as a permanent replacement for the lost feature.
Strategy 2: The 'Task-Level' Feed: If you cannot use Power Automate, you have to enforce a culture shift where the team relies on the Planner 'My Tasks' view or the Teams channel feed rather than individual email notifications. It is a workflow regression, but it’s the only way to avoid 'notification fatigue.'
Strategy 3: Integration with Outlook Groups: Sometimes, if the Planner is tied to a Microsoft 365 Group, the 'conversations' associated with the group can be surfaced in Outlook. It’s clunky, but it keeps the communication traceable.
Given your team's need for 'traceable and consistent' communication, I highly recommend investing the 15 minutes to set up a Power Automate flow. It’s the only way to get back that 'automatic' notification feel without manually managing @mentions.
Thank you for the detailed suggestions.
Regarding Strategy 1, could you share the exact Power Automate trigger or flow configuration you are using?
The reason I ask is that Microsoft Support explicitly confirmed to us that there is currently no supported trigger for new messages or edits within the new Planner task chat. If there is a supported way to detect task chat activity through Power Automate, that would be extremely valuable information.
Our understanding from Microsoft is that:
- The legacy task comments have been replaced by task chat
- Automatic email notifications have been removed by design
- @mentions are currently the only supported way to trigger email notifications
If you have implemented a working Power Automate solution specifically for task chat messages, I would be very interested in seeing how it was achieved.
We recently saw identical behavior in other Microsoft 365 installations. In many situations, the problem was due to notification sync delays or backend changes in Planner/Exchange Online rather than user settings. It's worth checking to see if email notifications are still enabled in Planner settings, and if affected users are receiving any other M365 alerts normally. We used Teams activity notifications as a temporary workaround until Microsoft fixed the sync issue.
We noticed similar behavior recently in a few Microsoft 365 environments. In many cases, the issue was related to notification sync delays or backend changes in Planner/Exchange Online rather than user settings themselves. It’s worth checking whether email notifications are still enabled under Planner settings and verifying if affected users are receiving any other M365 alerts normally. A temporary workaround we used was relying on Teams activity notifications until Microsoft resolved the sync issue.
Thank you for your input.
We initially considered the possibility of a notification sync issue as well. However, after opening a support case with Microsoft and having the behavior reviewed by the Planner support team, Microsoft confirmed that this is not a synchronization problem, a configuration issue, or a temporary service degradation.
According to Microsoft Support, the previous Planner comment functionality has been intentionally replaced by the new task chat experience. As part of this change, automatic email notifications for task discussions have been removed and there is currently no supported way to restore the previous behavior.
Microsoft further confirmed that @mentions within the task chat are now the only supported mechanism to trigger email notifications for individual users.
Therefore, at least in our case, this appears to be a product design change rather than a notification delivery issue.
Thank you for sharing your experience nonetheless. It would be interesting to hear whether other organizations have found a practical workaround for maintaining reliable task-related notifications.
This is causing huge issues at our organization, we rely heavily on those notifications. Microsoft please fix this ASAP!
This is actually a huge problem and regression - we've already seen issues the last two weeks with people not knowing which tasks require immediate answers and feedback and it's taking more time for them to close out. It's also forcing people to have to actively spend time and investigate all open tasks in case they are being asked anything or want to just want to review any updates from the last few days.
Absolutely ridiculous. Fix this Microsoft.
Microsoft Support explicitly confirmed:
“This behavior is by design and cannot be changed.”
So this is not a bug — it is a deliberate removal of functionality.
