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Jacques van der Hoven's avatar
Jacques van der Hoven
Iron Contributor
Oct 12, 2016

Planner Task Dependencies and Task Ordering

Something I'd like to add to Planner thinking is the concept of Task Dependencies. If this concept was added it would make ordering somewhat easier whereby it could order tasks in each bucket based o...
planner
Loryan Strant's avatar
Loryan Strant
MVP
Oct 19, 2016

The functionality you speak of is logical, but starts to head towards a project plan as opposed to task management.

You should look at the Task list in SharePoint as this gives you waterfall, ordering, etc. And you can open it in Microsoft Project if you like, or just use the Gantt chart view in the list.

 

buyerjkd's avatar
buyerjkd
Copper Contributor
Mar 03, 2017

I agree with your point, if you allowed dependancies it would get complicated and people would try and build plans within it better suited to msproject.  However I dont think it would be a big deal to allow decent sorting and some sort of linking or cross referring of tasks.  It'm also hoping that recurring tasks can be built in. Recurrences are no problem for outlook so why not this. I was a bit disappointed with planner when i first saw it demonstrated as it came across as a half hearted application a bit like some of the google tools that appear to do the job but in practice turn out out not to be usefull because of all the little things they dont do.

  • Technodude's avatar
    Technodude
    Iron Contributor
    Aug 15, 2019

    buyerjkd  It doesn't necessarily have to get complicated.  It depends what you use the dependancy for.

     

    For me, I would like to be prevented from marking a Task as started if it is dependant on another Task being finished.  Would be great if it came up with a dialog box saying 'Sorry, you cannot start this task until xxxxxxx is completed'.  I don't think that would complicate things at all.

     

    Just my thoughts on it...  🙂

    • VanioVanio's avatar
      VanioVanio
      Copper Contributor
      Jan 26, 2020

      Technodude 
      100% agree with you.

      E.g. if we check what Jira has to offer for task dependencies, we might quickly realize that Teams is still behind in the task management capabilities and all comments about it not being a waterfall PM solution just sound to me like an excuse at the moment.

      • Josephjhaney's avatar
        Josephjhaney
        Copper Contributor
        Jan 27, 2020
        I agree, this seems like a simple request, since often times task a must be completed before task b can be started, it would be nice to ensure the prerequisite task is complete.
  • AlekseyA's avatar
    AlekseyA
    Copper Contributor
    May 17, 2019
    There is a good tutorial on using flow to add recurring tasks for planner: https://medium.com/@rob.quatela/creating-recurring-tasks-in-microsoft-planner-using-microsoft-flow-f605814734df
  • Vince Jennings's avatar
    Vince Jennings
    Brass Contributor
    Mar 05, 2017

    I would like to see some way of organising the tasks to allow a team manger to coordinate a team.

     

    I saw a link on another discussion (I'm impatient) to this site: https://teamweek.com/

    This demos the sort of feature I would like to see.

    • Jacques van der Hoven's avatar
      Jacques van der Hoven
      Iron Contributor
      Mar 06, 2017
      Would Teams not be better suited to your needs?
      • Vince Jennings's avatar
        Vince Jennings
        Brass Contributor
        Mar 06, 2017

        Unfortunately Teams does not give me the task management.

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