Forum Discussion

Jaio's avatar
Jaio
Tin Contributor
May 19, 2026

Improve readability of Task Chat in new Microsoft Planner (full-width option needed)

Hello,

First of all, thank you for the new Planner experience and the introduction of Task Chat. I think it’s a very welcome improvement over the legacy comments system, because it allows to edit already posted comments.

However, there is a significant usability issue that is affecting our daily work:

👉 The Task Chat is displayed in a narrow side panel, which makes reading longer conversations difficult and inefficient.

In many real scenarios, task discussions are not just short comments. They often include detailed explanations, decisions, or back-and-forth exchanges between team members. The current layout forces users to read long messages in a very constrained width, which reduces readability and slows down collaboration.

Suggested improvement:

  • (preferred) Provide an option to expand Task Chat to full width -maybe another button like the one that already exists for 'Comments'- (or open it in a larger, dedicated view)
  • Alternatively, allow resizing of the chat panel
  • Even a “pop-out” experience (similar to Teams chat) would be helpful

This would significantly improve usability, especially for teams, like mine, that rely heavily on Planner for collaborative work and decision tracking.

Thanks for considering this feedback. I believe this change would greatly enhance the new Planner experience.

1 Reply

  • TracyAllenUNB's avatar
    TracyAllenUNB
    Copper Contributor

    Another issue related to the width of the task chat/conversations side panel is that the advanced options (e.g., formatting, attach files) are not visible, nor is the send icon. These are visible on the first post and the scaling impact is minimal because the width for typing is closer to the full width of the panel. Note, my experience is exclusively with Premium plans integrated with Teams although the above comments reference task 'chat, so they may be specific to Basic plans.