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- Is there a way to hide the "create a premium plan/premium templates" features for people without the license? I get that you want to sell more licenses in app but not ideal for Enterprise customers. Everyone think they will get a new Planner app with cool functionality but in reality its more or less the same Planner app with MS Projects functionality behind a pay wall. Not every new functionality needs the "Premium Diamond" you know 😉
- Is it possible to mark a task as On Track, in the way MS Project allows? It's much quicker than trying to work out the appropriate % complete based on start and end date. Also whilst I can create a custom field for a revised forecast date, how are users expected to track slippage against the dates in the plan?
- Any plan to support creating a planner card from email/Outlook, similar to create a task functionality? Or at minimum have the mail tasks visible in Planner, similar to To Do?
- The ability to interact with email is important to our organization. Even as we move our workflow towards Teams, email will remain the way we interact with users outside our organization. With that in mind, I have 2 questions: 1. As Jessica Perkins writes above, will we have the capability to email tasks to a planner board? Currently, the only way to do this is to send an email to a Teams Channel and create the tasks manually from the channel 2. Is it possible to receive email notifications off a task? And if so, is it possible to specify who receives these notifications (as in can you @mention specific users or only send a comment to everyone assigned to the task). We are a "hybrid" organization in that we haven't fully transitioned to Microsoft 365, but the two factors above are pushing us towards licensing Trello. I'm hoping the new Planner can solve these natively, as the Teams-native functionality seems pretty great!
- The ability to interact with email is important to our organization. Even as we move our workflow towards Teams, email will remain the way we interact with users outside our organization. With that in mind, I have 2 questions: 1. As Jessica Perkins writes above, will we have the capability to email tasks to a planner board? Currently, the only way to do this is to send an email to a Teams Channel and create the tasks manually from the channel 2. Is it possible to receive email notifications off a task? And if so, is it possible to specify who receives these notifications (as in can you @mention specific users or only send a comment to everyone assigned to the task). We are a "hybrid" organization in that we haven't fully transitioned to Microsoft 365, but the two factors above are pushing us towards licensing Trello. I'm hoping the new Planner can solve these natively, as the Teams-native functionality seems pretty great!
- Yes! This is what is needed when receiving a task via email or sending a task via email. Then the ability to provide automatic follow-up based on a provided date or the completion date of the planner task/card.
- Can you explain how the new Planner will support PMOs track and report the progress of programmes and projects, what tools are available to do this, and when a user requires a licence please?
- New Planner doesn't directly introduce anything here, but capabilities already exist in Project for the web, whose tasks will be exposed in new Planner. Also keep an eye on the Roadmap for Portfolio features coming later in the year. The beauty of new Planner is allowing the assigned resources to see their tasks from the PMO as well as being able to manage other work they have, some of whom won't need any additional license but can be assigned tasks.
- Are there plans to support importing tasks from Excel to planner? Copy and paste cells from Excel or Project into individual tasks would be a great feature.
There is a power automate for this but it would be so great if it was native within the system!
- It would be much faster to drag and drop or copy and paste images or files into a task. Are there plans to support this?
- Are there any plans for improvements to reporting? or exporting timesheet information?
- How do we add custom fields to tasks? How can tasks på accessed from dataverse? What are the license requirments for those features?
- Only tasks from premium plans are stored in Dataverse. They are available via various APIs and applications to people with the right level of access and license. There are some limitations on how they can be updated, and there is a schedule API for that purpose. Applications such as Power BI can report on those tasks. Additional fields can be added to premium plans, or if you use a PowerApp you could extend the schema for additional fields. Plan 3 and 5 give access for customization - see the Project Service Description - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/project-online-service-description/project-online-service-description
If there are hundreds of tasks in the project, the Show Outline Level feature could be very useful. Like in the MS Project and Project Web App. E.g. "Show Outline Level 1" could show the first hierarchy level tasks.
- Great suggestion! This isn't such an option at general release, but I can see this being something we may get customer feedback on and would be as a useful addition.
- Thank you, Brian, for your comment. I really appreciate your extensive experience in this area. Yes, the Outline Level feature would be super handy for the customers.
Reporting in Planner
As we have implemented the use of Planner is various workflows, we would like to understand, how the Reporting capabilities, that are currently limited, will be affected by the new Planner.
It is promising that the new Planner will provide greater visibility on the organization level, rather than the limited reporting capabilities currently available.
We are already investigating third-party solutions, specifically for Reporting (FluentPro - https://fluentpro.com/power-bi-pack-for-office-365-planner/) as we deem extended reporting capabilities, a must.
So, should we expect functional parity with this third-party product or should we still look into that?
Is there an option to be able to visualize or test these capabilities early on, prior to product release?
Thank you
- No change to how basic plan tasks can be accessed in Power BI. There are 3rd party options available, as you mention, and new Planner should not break these in any way. Premium plans are natively available to Power BI. I'd be surprised if the 3rd Parties don't also consolidate in their solutions.
