Strategic Missing Capabilities in the new Microsoft Planner (Enterprise Perspective)

The Present State of Microsoft Planner’s Vision

• Enterprises want one coherent work-management layer in Microsoft 365
• Microsoft’s ambition is to merge To Do, Planner, and Project for the Web into a single platform with Copilot, Goals, unified List/Board/Timeline views, and templates

The direction is sound: reduce fragmentation and tool sprawl, standardize data, and give leaders a clean and solid portfolio picture while teams execute in familiar interfaces. In an environment where all employees have access to the same tool, are already included in the resource pool and integration options are basically unlimited, this is a step, that everyone was looking forward to.

Nonetheless, the quip that “Microsoft abandoned MS Project 20 years ago” is a joke, but it reflects a real anxiety: if the new Planner displaces familiar scheduling experiences without enterprise-grade controls, PMOs will feel left alone again and disengage, in presence of abundant alternatives. Planner will not replace Microsoft Project, Primavera, or other detailled scheduling tools; those remain essential for deep dependencies, resource leveling, and baselining. 

Planner’s highest-value role is the management and aggregation layer above them: align goals, normalize metadata, and expose cross-program status. Simplicity matters, but simplicity cannot mean missing capability. If essential functions are absent, governance, traceability, and portfolio visibility suffer, and organizations turn to external tools.

Following is a list of core functionality that is currently missing and was needed about a month ago.

Current Structural Gaps

1. Date logic too rigid for management use
   No independent target/due date field; planning often hinges on Start/Finish + Duration, which limits top-down milestone control
2. Custom fields capped at 10 per plan
   Insufficient for enterprise metadata models and standardized portfolio reporting
3. Maximum task duration of 1,250 days
   Constricts representation of multi-year initiatives and capital programs
4. No enterprise-grade audit trail
   Lacks comprehensive, exportable change logs with retention controls for compliance
5. Flat responsibility model
   Multiple assignees exist, but no roles such as Owner, Reviewer, Approver; no RACI support
6. Insufficient hierarchy and dependencies for roll-ups
   Summary/sub-tasks exist, but cross-plan links and robust multi-plan aggregation are weak
7. Group-based permissions only
   Sharing tied to M365 Groups/Teams; no fine-grained task- or field-level permissions; no simple view-only for externals
8. Custom fields lack hyperlink behavior
   No URL field type; links in text fields are often not clickable for seamless navigation
9. Inconsistent text capture and formatting
   Notes lack reliable rich-text structure; long entries are hard to read
10. No page breaks or robust formatting for long descriptions
    Executive-level narratives and governance documentation become unwieldy
11. Limited standardization across plans
    No global library for reusable custom fields, bucket structures, or templates at tenant/portfolio level

Required Enhancements for Enterprise Readiness

1. Flexible date logic
   Allow target/due dates independent of Start/Finish; add constraints, buffers, alerts, and escalation rules
2. Expanded metadata framework
   Raise the custom-field limit; add field types (URL, Person, Multi-select), required fields, validation rules, and global field templates
3. Enterprise auditability
   Provide full change history with export, retention policies, filters by field/user, and API access
4. Role-aware assignments (RACI)
   Support roles (Owner, Doer, Reviewer, Approver), secondary ownership, and role-based views in people and reports
5. Portfolio-grade structure
   Enable cross-plan dependencies, milestone roll-ups, program-level summaries, consolidated capacity and risk views
6. Granular access control
   Introduce view-only sharing, external access without group membership, and task/field-level ACLs to protect sensitive data
7. Hyperlink-enabled fields
   Add a URL type and clickable rendering in text fields, with previews and allow-lists for approved domains
8. Robust editor for management communication
   Paragraphs, lists, headings, tables, code/quote blocks, and clean print/PDF output for formal documentation
9. Reusable enterprise templates
   Tenant-wide libraries for custom fields, buckets, and workflows; versioning and approval flows for governed rollout
10. Reliable data layer
    A standardized Power BI dataset, webhooks/events, incremental exports, and stable keys for multi-plan, multi-tenant analytics
11. Scaling for long-horizon work
    Lift or mitigate the 1,250-day limit for leaf tasks and provide guidance or rules for multi-year programs

Bottom line

Planner can succeed as the enterprise management layer if it remains simple but gains the capabilities listed above. One does not work without the other.
If Microsoft does not deliver these functions, enterprises will continue using Project, Primavera, or other scheduling tools — while adopting third-party platforms for governance and portfolio visibility. This would directly undermine Planner’s goal of becoming the unified standard within Microsoft 365.

Please, do us a favor and spare organizations from having to implement yet another third-party tool.

(And yes: I am aware of multiple enterprises that are in the process of testing and implementating different tools, presicely because of this missing capability)