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 r...
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.
Progress does seem slow. I've been managing all my micro-projects with Planner since it came out of preview, and by the looks of it nothing new or improved has shown up in Planner.
The way Planner integrates awkwardly with Teams is also a concern. For my latest project I decided to use a Plan within a Team channel but then realised that would be a step backwards. Even basic stuff is missing, like the channel showing a notification when a task is closed or overdue. So I've gone back to the pure Planner experience for now.
I agree with you, Magnus. It's super frustrating to not see anything move on this, especially any of the basics that you would expect from a task planning tool (I'm looking at you, notifications, which was 'started' on User Voice back in APRIL!!!).
And unfortunately, at least in my organization, the success of Groups as a whole is kind of hanging in the balance since task management is central to just about any project or team. The higher-ups want to use something where everything is in one place; files, conversations, and tasks, but if Planner isn't going to pull through then we're probably going to move to Base Camp (as much as I and many others would hate - one more place to log in to and check).
And a side note regarding UserVoice: really, the only team that I feel that does a good job with it is the SharePoint team. Their UserVoice is pretty awesome and you regularly see updates and interaction from them.
