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Absolutely. Right now Planner is very limited as an enterprise solution. Every plan/project is in its own silo and one can't manage resources, tasks or projects outside of a small team. The following features are critical before we can deploy across our organization:
- Resource management across multiple projects. As a minimum it should be possible to view the Assignments and Charts tabs across a whole group, not just a single plan. Similar for People and Goals tabs would also be useful.
- Task dependencies between different projects
- Task requests into a project, allowing outside the project team to make a request that the Project Manager needs to accept
- Allowing a task to be in more than one project (could be similar to the above)
Other items that would be helpful:
- "Sticky" views, with the current state of filters, group by, zoom, date range etc retained between sessions
- Bulk update of tasks
- Moving tasks between projects
- Keeping effort constant when duration of a task is changed
- Allowing top-level tasks to connect to Goals
- Other key missing elements: 1) The ability to customize/add columns (I like to create a "Milestone" columns and mark certain tasks accordingly); and 2) The ability to create a WBS - without having to do a workaround. Frankly, I'm amazed that these components are missing - at least from the version(s) that I am using.
ansingh32Microsoft
Hey Tenielle, Courtney, OwenJones. Thank you for your interest in the Portfolios capability. We are on track to release the first set of Portfolios capabilities in Planner which would enable you to create a Portfolio, add your premium plans to the Portfolio to track multiple plans at single location and also visualize tasks across these different plans on a Roadmap. In terms of timelines, we are targeting end of this year for the release of Portfolios in Planner. Additionally, Resource allocation across the Portfolio is part of our backlog and we would be working on this scenario soon as well.Hi Ansingh32,
Thanks for the response. I was finally able to watch the recording of Q&A and I have to say I'm a little disappointed with what seems to be included as a 'Portfolio' capability, especially when compared to MS Project and Project online. I am often bombarded with "Try Project for the web" (now planner premium) as an alternative/the Project management product Microsoft has chosen to move forward with, so I was expecting the Portfolio Capabilities to start bringing in at least some of the missing functionality critical for properly managing Projects (rather than just.. coordinating some dates but only kind of)
Not to take away from the amount of work that has gone into all these features shown in the Q&A, i can imagine adding in functionality with AI and teams integration and all that is difficult, but's its really highlighted that if a business wants to set themselves up long term with a robust project management tool that allows for basic things like setting proper baselines at the task level, costings and actual resource management, all signs point to moving away from Microsoft:- No more new or updated features for MS project and Project online with the https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/project-for-the-web-and-project-online-6569170c-5c8e-474e-a7f0-642872f62f8a#:~:text=We%20remain%20deeply%20committed%20to,transition%20as%20soon%20as%20possible. of "There is no date to limit the functionality of Project Online at this time, but we encourage customers to plan their transition as soon as possible." and " Going forward, all innovation will occur in Project for the web."
- Project for the Web/Planner premium being many years away from having even half the functionality MS project offers, if ever.
I am excited for the section of the market that Planner/Planner premium does work for, but this information has been the nail in the coffin for what I recommend in my workplace.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
