Forum Discussion
Joanna Parkhurst
Microsoft
Jun 10, 2019How should we improve Labels in Planner?
Hello Tech Community!
The Planner Team is constantly striving to provide excellent service by adding and improving on existing features. We have noticed a need on improving upon labels, but would like to gather more feedback in order to get better understanding of your needs.
We would like to learn more about how you utilize labels, specifically:
1) How do you use labels to organize your work?
2) How many labels do you need?
3) Would you like an ability to customize colors? If so, how would you use it?
4) How would you like labels to appear on task cards?
5) Is there anything else would you like to add in regards to labels?
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Cheers,
The Planner Team
- HudsonkCopper Contributor
Joanna Parkhurst In a project management context we use MSPlanner to record tasks that apply to approximately 100 different lines of effort, including about 60 different products, and about 40 different process categories. We use the Buckets to create a Kanban board (Backlog/To do/Doing/Blocked/Done), so that we can analyse where my team is stuck, and reallocate tasking or resources when certain lines of effort become higher priority. (we use the 'assign to' file for humans). We are used to dealing with the 'infinite' number of tags/labels available in Outlook (which is how we were previously tracking tasks). Most tasks have one label, however some tasks will have multiple labels (such as relating to product X, product Y and process )
At the moment, we are stuck because at 25 labels, we can only label the first 25 lines of effort.
Right now we need at least 100 labels, however I'd suggest it should be an infinite bucket. Setting a limit on labels seems to limit the use of MSPlanner to only very rudimentary tasking systems.
Colour coding is a nice visual cue to have, however it will not hurt at all if colours are re-used - there are only so many colours. It would be valuable to be able to set colours (as we can do in Outlook). More importantly, I would like the labels to sort A-Z (or be able to set the order myself).
Separately, we very much need to be able to distinguish assignment roles - including "leader"; "contributor"; "reviewer/approver"
- VinVenusCopper Contributor
@Joanna Parkhurst Please enable the customised ordering of labels - or at least order them by default alphabetically.
The current order by recently used does not make sense when working collaboratly in a bigger team.
- Deanna2022Copper Contributor
We use all 25 colors.
I'd love to duplicate colors. We have categories across our teams. It would be nice to add additional category and assigned person as the same color.
We need to be able to customize the colors.
- GamerzKrisBrass Contributor
Good Morning Joanna,
I appreciate that the MS Planner Team has been making the efforts to reach out to the Planner community.
A couple things I would like to see. I've noticed a lot of the functions mentioned in previous comments have been implemented. I would hope to see the following:
1. For the actual 'Card', is it possible to change/manipulate its appearance either with Solid Colours, Gradiant Colours or Custom images, instead of just plain white cards, as well with the coloured labels? Even the option for a light grey so it is a little easier on the eyes.
2. For the MS Planner application in SharePoint, you are provided some backgrounds to use, but they aren't necessarily appropriate for our team, and would appreciate the ability to customize the background colour of the application, either with Solid/Gradient Colour or a custom background.
Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to see these recommendations be considered into future production updates
Cheers,
Kris Smith - paulinhchrisCopper ContributorHello planner team,
I believe it would be great the user could choose the number of labels, their colors and the order they will appear on the top of the task.
Number of labels: the need of labels vary a lot depending on the project.
Color changing: the way to use colors also vary a lot depending on the project. Sometimes I wish to have more red labels, for exemple, because it would be connected with the logic of a group of labels. So, making it free for the user to customize would be a perfect solution.
Organization of the labels: The position of the labels on the top of card is perfect! But sometimes the label that matter most is not the first of the list. So, it would be great that we could change the position of the labels between themselves.
Best Regards!
Paula Vasconcelos - seancleachCopper ContributorPlease arrange for a MS 365 group that there is one coordinated set of labels across all teh plans that are used in that Group, this would then alloe tasks to be moved across plans and teh labels reatained and impose some level of management of labels, as opposed to teh free for all at the moment - or maybe have an option for no control and control 🙂
- TylerWaltonCopper Contributor
As long-time users of the Office Suite, we're delighted to begin using To Do, Planner and Project to gain needed efficiency across our business. Most of our initial preparation has been organizing Planner for our Leadership Team's usage. In so doing, we've found the following three short-comings that would be easy improvements to code and would provide high value for us. PLEASE CONSIDER ASAP!
1 - Open the full task window when adding a new task.
The user experience is widely reported in forums as being annoyingly clumsy. What we, and many community posts, are asking for is a simple one-click open of the full task window. Today, we can only add 3 bits of data to the initial screen. When this proves too limiting, as it has with the 95% of the first 75 tasks we've added, we then have to click away from the add
1st click - add task, opens new task where we can only enter Task Name, Due Date, and Assign. This is the real problem because in our first 75 tasks we've needed to add more than these three limited fields to virtually 100% of our new tasks. Why not give us full access on this so we can use all the available fields? It wouldn't hurt anyone if this was the default. We could all use as many fields as we would like. But, because this is the case, then we have to proceed as follows to get to the full screen for every new task.
2nd click - Add Task - closes this new task and takes you to a possible next new task...with no way to easily open the new one you had just created.
3rd click - Click previously created new task to open it - result simply closes the new task box
4th click - 2nd time click previously created new task to open and edit it - result opens task where you can finally get to all the fields as desired.
Summary - Clicks 2, 3, and 4 could all be eliminated by having Click 1 simply open the full task window.
2 - Allow Users to control Label Sorting instead of forcing sort by recently used.
Again we find many posts that share our view that it is very annoying that labels order is only sorted by recently used. In our case, we have defined the following 7 stages of development that we want to use, which would be very helpful visually. Because these stages are SEQUENTIAL, we want/need them to stay in our defined order for easy selection.
1-Requirements
2-Design
3-Engineering
4-QA
5-Pending Publish
6-Published
7-Launch
Unfortunately, what the sort by recent does to our list is quite messy as the following shows.
6-Published
2-Design
3-Engineering
7-Launch
4-QA
1-Requirements
5-Pending Publish
Summary, please let us sort by A-Z, or even more simply turn the recent sort OFF so the default order just stays unchanged.
3 - Reduce the excess space used by each Comment in the log.
Simply, there is way too much space used around each Comment. This wasted space means that our logs are much longer than is necessary to scroll down through.
Summary, making the Comment logging space more compact would increase the ease of use.
Many thanks for considering our requests. 1 and 2 are big deals for us!
- askunCopper ContributorHello. As it is not possible to customize the "progress", we are using labels instead with our own progress steps. Therefore we are using the group by label function all the time. However, recently, many more labels have been added (such as, light green, teal, magenta, etc) and now the group by label has become very chaotic. We could really use the option to remove the labels which we do not use. Thank you for your consideration.
- JohnS214Copper Contributor
Was looking at the use of labels in conjunction with some "rules" - would like to define some rules that would change between labels similar to what can be done with Jira. Particularly wanting to designate a label based on when last updated, for example.
- Michael2205Copper ContributorI use the Planner to manage a work 'pipeline' for a team. I use labels to be able to select appropriate views for different audiances. By Supplier or by works area and also to focus on work targeted for completion in the current delivery period. As there are so few labels then I use a hash tag in the Task title together with the text search filter to focus the view on differnet works areas, projects, work-packages etc. But I would rather not have to use this method as it is not possible to OR as it is with the Labels. I would like to have n+1 labels. The current visual layout is fine for me. I need to restrict others from changing the labels. I would like to allow users some freedom to add 'user' labels for particular uses. Thanks
- lukebeckmanCopper Contributor
1) How do you use labels to organize your work?
We use buckets to indicate the Responsible Team member. We assign all team members who work on a task to that task which sits in a person's bucket. We use labels to tag the domain of the task...for example, the task is to develop a training calendar. Luke is accountable so the task sits in his bucket. Luke and Ian and Ty have to work on the task so they are all assigned that task. The task is in the domain of workforce engagement and training, so it gets two Labels.
2) How many labels do you need?
We will need about a dozen labels. Most tasks will have about 3 labels assigned.
3) Would you like an ability to customize colors? If so, how would you use it?
We would like to be able to drag the colors of labels around, so that blue or red could be at the top, not just pink.
4) How would you like labels to appear on task cards?
We like how labels appear currently. Perhaps a little bit bigger/more bold.
5) Is there anything else would you like to add in regards to labels?