Forum Discussion
What’s Good About Microsoft Planner So Far (and What’s Still Missing)
After several months of using Microsoft Planner in Office 365 to manage tasks and collaborate on projects, I've put together my thoughts on what's good so far, and what's missing.
Click here to read my blog post
Things on the roadmap that I'm looking forward to:
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Assigning tasks to multiple people
- External guest access
- Templates
Things I couldn't find on the roadmap yet, but I would like to see:
- Better Outlook integration (there’s no connection between Planner tasks and Outlook tasks).
- Wrapping of long bucket names.
- Marking checklist items within a task should automatically mark the task as “In progress”.
- New tasks in a bucket should be added to the bottom of the list
- Sorting of My Tasks list by due date
- Notifications for tasks about to expire/expired
- Daily digest email of tasks due today/tomorrow/this week/this month
- Favorite plans not added to Outlook favorites automatically
- Multiple plans per Group
- Charts for plans showing per-bucket progress of items
38 Replies
- One of the non-starters for using Planner extensively has been the inability to control access. Any project manager who manages multiple tasks with multiple task owners will tell you that it is critical for control and governance that there is restrictions around what a task owner can do. Currently, any task owner can edit, delete or mark complete tasks which are not even they are assigned. This access control is an immediate need to make this tool useful for effectively managing projects/tasks.
PLEASE, add two things
1) The ability to paste multiple items in a checklist... Trello has this...and if MS Planner does not, we won't use it... This is deal breaker.
2) Styling, Setting Background. Frankly, the look and feel of Planner really stinks. Why can't you add more style... Trello allows cool pictures... and the style is far more advanced. Can't you add the ability for a user to set the background. Planner looks like a stack of blocks a student worker designed for a college class. It really stinks..
- HowardCrow
Microsoft
The team has been working super hard on Planner. microsoftplanner.uservoice.com is the place to put in and track your requests. We won't do every request from everyone (for obvious reasons). - 2 years on and still loads missing from the initial wishlist. Seems like teams has become the new priority instead of planner.
Feel the need to add to tthis thread.
I have been a firm critic of Planner and much of that frustration is still there. However, with the integration of Flow I think the possibilities are AWESOME!
We are seriously looking to use Planner again and nothing makes me happier (ok that's an exaggeration, but you get the point).
I still feel like the Planner team REALLY needs to spend some time on uservoice because it is a shame that you don't keep that updated. For example, one of the highest voted requests is for a view of "my tasks" and that functionality exists in Planner today but people are voting for the feature and no one from the Planner team seems to bother labelling that request as completed. Why have a uservoice forum if you don't keep it updated. Just breeds confusion and frustration.
My recommendation to users out there is give Planner a SERIOUS look. Sure, you might have to look into Flow as well, but Planner is looking very good NOW (not promising for the future).
For the Planner team. Great job! In my opinion you now have the minimum viable product for the great masses. Make sure you get the word on Planner out there this and get Community to use uservoice and vote for what is needed.
I'm looking forward to making Planner AWESOME together.
Is Planner dead? Is there anything happening? Does anyone from Microsoft comment on features coming?
- Here is the blog which details the announcements for Planner from Ignite 2017. HTH to understand their roadmap.
http://www.jijitechnologies.com/blogs/microsoft-planner-new-feature-announcements-ignite
RobOK wrote:Is Planner dead? Is there anything happening? Does anyone from Microsoft comment on features coming?
Plenty of roadmap items, but yes, curiously slow development.
All nice to have the problem is how far it will step onto the toes of MS Project? I like the feature set requested but at a point it starts becoming a "PRO" version. Think they have to have a line on Product Protection and making Planner too good will affect this. As an example our Marketing Team have taken to MS Planner in a big way but our Operations feel your limitations. We embed Project Online links into the Planner Tiles for our Ops and Project management teams.
Lee Quinn wrote:All nice to have the problem is how far it will step onto the toes of MS Project?
Far points but I also think most of my critiques are not entirely new features, more like improvements to existing features and basic quality of user experience stuff. None of them really make Planner more suited to the type of complex projects management where Project itself fits in, but would make Planner more of a joy to use instead of an app with frustrating rough edges.
- I'd like to see archiving of completed buckets too.
- Anyone frustrated with the lack of feature updates on the planner user voice website. So many things promised with months and no progress updates
I think Denis brings up THE key point.
Look, I'm a big Office365 proponent. Hell, I'm even a Dynamics365 fan boy. I use Windows Phone and have an Xbox sitting at home. I'm a Microsoft fan.
With that said, what the hell is up with Planner??? MS abandoned Sharepoint tasks and were going to build something new. We waited. Along (after a couple of years) came Planner.
I participated in Planner Yamjams, gave feedback on this board, wrote suggestions on uservoice. I started using it a little bit.
Then we rolled it out to a small team during the beta, but it was just not very good. Then we added Apps4.pro. A HUGE step forward. It plugs some wholes and makes the product usable. Still, as someone said, we expect their functionality in the standard product. Period. Or we will use something else. Todoist works just fine, someone else mentioned SmartSheet, we use that today as well.
So is today's product good? I am yet to hear about ONE company who thinks this is great product that does not lack a lot of functionality. Give me one evangelic customer who says Planner has significantly impacted their business... one.
But it is not the lack of features that is the biggest problem. It is the lack of progress as Denis points out. Planner was introduced in a blog post 2016-09-22. More than a year ago. On user voice there are more than 1 000 suggestions. Microsoft has updated the status on 17 of them. They are thinking about 5, planned 2, started 8 and completed 2. Completed 2 in a year. Two. Additionally, the user voice site is just so lame and feels dead from MS side. A lot of user input but just poorly managed from MS side.
This is just not acceptable. I am sad to say that we, being a Microsoft super fan and having waited eagerly several years for planner, completely discard the idea of using it. I would like, almost expect, an excuse from someone on the Planner team for having such a bad track record.
So to me it feels like MS is winding this product down. If you're not going forwards you are going backwards. The roadmap is totally uninspiring. If I do not hear from any other member of the team, we will use the many other great Office365 services instead.
I need to stay off this forum, cause this has gotten me all worked up now :smileyfrustrated:
Look at this, it's on their product page: apps and email notifications (and no, subscribing to the Group does not count for me as a task "email notification"). These have been there for months. Neither of these are actually available, but hey, let's keep advertising the non-existant features.
We used planner to replace Trello, it works but has been a little rough, some form of integration between the two seems like a good idea but not likely for obvious reasons. That said, the main thing I would love to see is more DevOps related features and templates for DevOps, many may argue that point but Trello is very effective for managing DevOps, not for massive projects perhaps but very good for smaller ones.
