Forum Discussion
Ability to send an email to Planner and create a Task
Is this on the roadmap?
Our organization is starting to lose the battle of using Planner instead of Trello, pretty much because of the sole feature that Trello allows you to send an email to a specific email address and it will automatically create a Task.
It is quite a simple model:
Email Subject = Task Title
Email Body = Task Description
Email Attachments = Task Attachments
This would be a massive win for adoption.
Looks like this is the entry with the most votes, but there are about 100 of them that individually are asking for the same/similar functionality: https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/13076007-ability-to-add-email-as-planner-task
For our ticketing system (eg, our helpdesk within a small team of 6) Planner wasn't fit for purpose including the email>task integration it's lacking. This would have been great, but it's not been a priority for MS. We've moved to Freshservice which is built more for this and much much simpler without needing to manage PowerAutomate flows too.
We're still using Planner to log tasks for longer term projects where we revisit the board weekly and set deadlines, but in this case it's standalone and no need for email integration.- I set up my family with microsoft 365. I wanted to be able to play with the features a bit and get used to them without deadlines etc. I played with free FLOW addons.
When working with FLOW, you first need to design an ALGORITHM for your particular use. So many of you want to create a kanban style board that you can send an email to that will update the information on the board. I'm afraid that's not going to be an easy one to build.
The advantage of a service like trello is that they run in an apache based webserver with an automated attendant process. Everything is just a message that gets handled based on the message type, which directs the process to handle each piece of information accordingly. Planner does not run the same exact way. In fact, it only has one full item identification, the task. Each task has features associated with it, but all messages are a task, handled as a glob of data for a database running in the background. While it was built to be a starting point for the feature set, it has remained at that level. Microsoft is targeting a wider array of small to medium sized organizations with that, it isn't a fault or a failure, but much of the functions were already covered by trello or others, and microsoft didn't want to try and compete with an already existing market that would require much more development time and effort, which would push the pricing up.
I agree that tasking and other capabilities are important and even integral for every business. I just don't think they will be rolling out any extended features for this app. It was meant to get people into the idea of the function, and to drive developers to integrate with it, while providing basic and simplified functions for everybody that wouldn't require a lot of maintenance.
For those of you still looking for a solution, I may have some notes. I'm going to play with FLOW and see what I can find for Planner, but it will take some time for me to lay out all the data objects and how to move them around.
From what I can tell, you want to automate a mailbox with its own planner, which I concede is not easy, but should be simple enough. You'd have two avenues to follow:
1. Create a form that gets used by outlook, with its own button initiator that creates the "task" and sends it to the board--which is a bit superfluous as it would require access levels you don't want to give out.
2. Create one or several FLOW automated applications that will take an email, create a data object from that email with the pertinent information and move any items in attachments to their necessary place where they can be properly accessed without being "accidentally" deleted. You would then have to utilize the data you just built as a data object (sharepoint lists are great for this because the data can be read as numbers, or text or whatever you need, right from the list and it is handled on the fly by the FLOW) and build a task from that, with a link to any attachments. It would be prudent to set a value as a flag, something like the "task delegate" field would do. Utilizing this Task Delegate info, any task that has a person attached other than the mailbox itself would be locked for editing, and only the "Mailbox Owner" or person designated by access rights would be able to alter the task. Then the flow ends and from then on, the task is only editable from the planner by the person responsible for maintaining the board. If you have no person, you could make an almost zerox copy of the FLOW, but you can make an adjustment that would search for a specific word in the first letters of the subject of the email; if you add a hashtag and an autonumber to the name of the task in the original flow, you can use this to find and update the information. If your sharepoint list is in order, you won't have any problem in the second flow, finding and updating the rows of the list, then using those to find and update the task.
If you don't restrict the access to the mailbox or planner, then you could end up with people fighting over who does what, and when bonuses depend on tasks completed or tickets or leads, it can lead to some mix up, or even force out some of your talent. Enter Sharepoint. You can restrict the mailbox and the planner but that may restrict functions you need unrestricted. It defeats the purpose. Sharepoint can have a value for how many updates there have been, and a list of the persons who take the task, usually in the order in which they apply for it. This leads to the third FLOW, which checks the planner for changes, and updates sharepoint only. The other two don't have to fill this value. When there is a change made, the changes Flow will make the adjustment. Here's the key, run the first flow, check for the hashtag and only process the ones without, then run the second flow, check for the hashtag and run on those that have it, and at the end of the second flow, run the changes flow, which updates sharepoint values for all of the changed tasks, using the flag on the task. If you create the sharepoint list with the first flow (if it doesn't exist) before you start testing the received items, you can run the second and third without the test for it. IF you delete the list, you can start fresh later. Every so often it might be prudent to output this list to an excel file, and then start over. While processing the items, don't forget to move the mail either to a folder outside of the inbox or archive it somehow. You don't want others with access to the mailbox and planner to delete or otherwise foul up the data, so you might create a mailbox that just holds these, and forward the message during the first and second flow, then delete it. This will create a searchable, locked down archive of the emails with which you can quickly reconstitute the planner, even if you don't get all the numbers on how many updates there are, you will get the ending task set. If you build a flow that uses your sharepoint list, you can subtract one from the updates value, and then set your flow to run normally on the group mailbox (not the archive).
That should do. Have this run every 5-10 minutes. You should be gold. Larger organizations, maybe push to 15-30 minutes. If you need this to run more immediately, get power apps for desktop and run this in constant loop fashion on a single machine, in one flow that tests the mailbox for changes and for each change runs an instance of the flow for only those changes. You can run this every minute or so, and it should appear almost instantaneous. Put it on a higher core count processor with plenty of ram.HalDavis85 Way to shoot a fly with a cannon.
All we (read, at least most of us) need is a simple way to add new cards to the table using email. If I use Planner for ToDo, it's easier to just throw a quick email at it and have it create a task for me. If it includes a picture, fine. If there's a link, just as good. If there are no attachments, who cares? It still saves whatever you wrote there. No need to switch apps, you can just throw anything you were doing in the email client at it and It Just Works. That is, if you're using Trello. Not so much with Planner.
And no, there are no REAL reasons why Planner couldn't have just the same. You can talk all you want about tasks and Apache servers, but it won't change that. Today's work place is (for many) not location or device dependent. You use what you have, where you need it and you need things to work. I don't care whether I'm using my Windows desktop with the Outlook app, my Macbook laptop with it's Apple Mail, my iPhone or my Android tablet. I need to be able to add new tasks no matter what the platform is -> emailing them to your "planner address" solves all that. No need to create clunky flows, no need to learn sharepoint, no need to do anything other utterly ridiculous to just get by in a small company.
Let's be realistic: a toy app like Planner is not used in enterprise environment anyway. It simple, it's easy, it's used by those who want to get things done rather than spend their days writing code to get it to do something you could've done manually at fraction the cost.
Teams have their own email addresses. There's no reason why Planners couldn't have them as well if only Microsoft bothered to think about what they're doing even for a while.
I gave up on Planner ages ago and went back to Trello. Just forgot to turn off notifications for this thread. I'll do it now. Microsoft will not do this and without it Planner is just useless.- When microsoft 365 groups are created, you have the ability to utilize the entire architecture, not just the architectures you would add to a mail enabled grouping. These group workspaces include a planner board. Planner will not "REACT" to emails sent to the box, but you can send mail to the mailbox.
Trello isn't just an app. It utilizes outside servers to run automated processes that handle converting your emails to tasks. Microsoft provides the automation architecture, not the underlying code, which could be massively simple or massively complicated.
If you use a basic mail item, you run the risk of having the address hacked and used for spam, which could ruin your project boards. However, if you have certain requirements in the mail, that allows you to test that email first. You can set the box to only accept from those in your company, which is safer but still has some complexity. Mail items don't conform to the same structure as a task, which is why the two functions are separate in outlook, and use different item types. Tasks in exchange are a mailbox item, but are processed differently. Calendar items also. If you were to use the TASK data type, you could look for that as an attachment or react to it as a sent type. Processing a Task data type into a task data type results in filling in mostly the same fields of data from one to the other. This is very simple by comparison to using mail data types. It also allows you to automate your processing with checks for the data needed to place the item, and create a backup of the information for quick use later.
Again, Trello is great, especially if that is how you work. They have their own processing servers running the conversions of items. You are asking microsoft to provide the servers and the processing fully coded at no extra cost, which is a tall order. They provide the automation services in FLOW and in Azure with Power Apps. However, they do not pretend to know how each person or company works, they build their solutions to hit the widest audience possible in the most cost effective manner. They don't specialize to particular groupings like corporate entities with any single app. Instead they target every user with the widest and simplest building blocks so that each entity can build on top of it to make things fit.
IF you have been using trello or similar, I recommend you stick with it. Planner isn't garbage, its just a basic Kanban Project Board for all. You can build more into it yourself, if you want to, but for those small to medium sized businesses I've worked with, a basic board is more than enough, providing a place for work-groups to lay out projects and select those tasks they can fit into their schedules.
It is a basic tool. If you want more full featured, you have to purchase a tool specifically for the set of functions you want beyond the basic task management. Alternatively, you can build the features with automation of your own using desktop FLOW's or program the cloud service yourself and link it. You may have a little trouble with the OAuth data handling that handles user authentication since it's one of the more updated sets of code.
I'm sorry you were disappointed with planner. Every company with whom I've rolled it out has been ecstatic about it. Some did eventually move to trello, and one of them had me design the basic algorithm for using both planner and trello together. A programmer built the automation onto one of their servers, which constantly runs the checks in an app that is registered in their cloud, with a service user account. It functions much the same as trello, but people send a task item to the Planner, which is converted to a planner task, then copied to an email for a trello board. They are a hybrid of Microsoft and Google, so much of their cloud is synchronised between the two in such a fashion. Trello houses the information for both, but planner is used as a front end, along with email, to send new tasks to the boards. It took a few weeks to build it, but it works. They can also send emails to the 365 group and it will get processed, putting up tasks onto the planner, which fires an auto copy to trello. I also heard the apps check Trello for changes of certain types and checks them against planner. People who select to take a task get a message from trello if they are in gmail, the others get the items added to their to do lists. It took nearly a year to build the code and get the nuances right. That's why Trello gets some $$ to work the way they do. They provide only one particular service and can do that well. Planner is not meant to be a replacement for Trello. It is an alternative.
