Microsoft Planner Year in Review and What's to Come
Published Jun 22 2017 01:39 PM 14.9K Views
Microsoft

Happy Planner-versary!

 

A year ago, we introduced Microsoft Planner, a simple, visual tool for organizing teamwork. Since then, we've added a variety of new capabilities to improve the Planner experience and help users get more done. To recap the past few months, we have announced:

 

As we look back, we would like to take a deeper dive into some of these announcements to review what we released and what's to come. 

 

Native mobile app for iOS and Android phones

We released our native Planner app at the end of May, and we're continuing to monitor your feedback here and on our UserVoice site. We will be release app updates across platforms on a frequent basis throughout the year. Over the next few months, you can expect to see push notifications, plan creation, and mobile app management (MAM) through Microsoft Intune in the coming months.

 

 

mobile.png

 

 

Integration with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is one of Microsoft's newest productivity solutions, and enables you to collaborate in a real-time, chat-based environment. Since the Microsoft Teams announcement in March, we've further developed the integration between Planner and Teams. Today, you can create a plan in the Planner web app and mirror that plan in Teams, enabling scenarios where users can update the same plan regardless of whether they access it on their mobile device, the web app, or through the integration with Teams. All tasks assigned to you in Teams will appear in the "My Tasks" page in the web and mobile apps.

 

These features are just the beginning: In the coming year, we will enable users to link more plans from Microsoft Teams, create templates from recurring plans, and incorporate more of the Planner experience within Teams.

 

teamsinteg.JPG

 

Updated user interface

In the upcoming months, you may notice an update to the Planner UI. We have made the Planner experience faster, more intuitive, and more beautiful. This update will roll out to production starting in July.

 

newplanhub.JPG

 

General availability of APIs and connectivity with Flow

The Planner API, which enables users to extend Planner to other apps both inside and outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, became generally available in May. We've also released the preview of Planner as an endpoint in Flow, Microsoft's solution for automating workflows from a wide variety of endpoints. 

 

In the upcoming year, we will continue to ship new and innovative features that help you do more with Planner, and we encourage you to visit our UserVoice site to submit suggestions. In September, we will release our updated roadmap at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, and we hope to see you there!

 

Cheers,

The Planner team

 

 

 

24 Comments
Microsoft

See you at Ignite @Dave Heller :)

Microsoft

I'm not sure we'll have a booth, but definitely grab a front row seat at the session! See you there

Bronze Contributor

Great product. Looking forward to more of those top USERVOICE projects getting done in 2017.

Bronze Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller, Thanks for this blog and excited to see many thing coming in to Planner which increases the Planner adoption. 

Deleted
Not applicable

Wonderful news..

 

Thanks

Bronze Contributor

Any Planner activity is good activity. 

The title was little bit of clickbait though, I was expecting a little more than a UI Screenshot and the information about Ignite (which isn't something new by itself :p )

Iron Contributor

This is really just confirmation of how slow development of Planner is. Still impossible to use it as a productivity tool for a team as nobody can see their team/group tasks alongside the list of what they are doing themselves in To-Do or Outlook. And making it "more intuitive, and more beautiful" is an insult as it just makes people want to use it more, without actually making any difference to their ability to actually do so. Making it work would be a better use of development time.

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the update. At our firm we're excited about the possibilities for Planner, and we're looking forward to seeing these new features implemented. That being said, it's a little discouraging to look on UserVoice and see that only 7 features are marked as "Started", and two of these are "People with long names cannot be removed from the plan" and "Swedish translation are very bad." Hoping that Planner will achieve true functionality soon.

Deleted
Not applicable

Agree Stuart, 

    The product looks nice and all, but it's lacking some major features. I mean it's sitll early I guess and hopefully more plans are coming, but the uservoice stuff alone still isn't enough to make it real world useful. I mean the only use case for it is a short term project group or something. Any group used for a Team setting, or longer term use forget it, with no task archiving, and really not a lot of view / filter options, I don't see much of a point of using it outside of a SharePoint task list. Now if they would make planner connect to a SharePoint list as it's back end, and you could use either. Now we are getting somewhere. 

Copper Contributor

Still nothing regarding support for external users? 

Iron Contributor

thx for the update...where do I find the roadmap...there's no filter for planner in the office 365 roadmap page (even thought it says so at the bottom of this page)

 

Silver Contributor
Is anything new coming up for Planner? It looks like the program has gone stale. Seems like a lot in the Uservoice is being planned but nothing seems to be happening.
Deleted
Not applicable
Silver Contributor
Thanks Christopher, I'll take a look at the video.
Deleted
Not applicable

Lots of much needed items to make Planner useable, the only problem is when :P. Alot of these features are supposed to be pushing this month, but alot of still highly needed items after the year. 

Bronze Contributor

Here is the blog which details the recent announcements for Planner from ignite 2017. 

http://www.jijitechnologies.com/blogs/microsoft-planner-new-feature-announcements-ignite

Brass Contributor

Hi Dave, when are the new Planner features going to be in place / available to all?  (The ones that you presented a month ago ...Schedule for the calendar, individual notifications for assignment, etc ...

 

We're really looking forward to these being in place but they're nowhere to be found in our plan if it's supposed to be already deployed..?

Brass Contributor

Is it just me or having a target date for the release of these long awaited features seems impossible to get?
I'm presenting Planner in details to my team today to help them use the tool but already the thing they're asking for are the calendar, due date notifications and individual mail notification when assigned or concerned by a modification.

 

Please provide us with some information.
Does anyone here know of a date, even if unsure, for the release?

Deleted
Not applicable

I agree. These 3 features are trello killers for me and I can’t day oh hey here is planner use this instead because it’s lacking those features. 

Microsoft

@Deleted

@Jonathan Leclerc

 

Those three features are coming in the next three months. While we're going to publish a blog this week or next listing out our roadmap, I wanted to give you some minor advanced notice :) 

 

We also demoed the calendar during our Ignite session: 

Deleted
Not applicable

Yup, I went to those they were glorious, just thought those 3 things were coming soon :P. Guess not as soon as we hoped :(. Good things coming thou, we just are excited to get them lol. I want them so I can start shutting down the trello train :P. 

Brass Contributor

@Deleted Pretty much the same feeling here. Good to know there's a timeframe we can look for now, but I was also hoping to hear something like 'By the end of November' ;o) 

 

@Dave Heller Saddly we have a big project through out our compagny that we started managing and following with Planner already and it's coming to term in Spring 2018. So thanks for the info and I do hope you guy will give it the extra push to make this 3 months estimate sound like 'Here's your Christmas present' =oD

Thanks for the follow up, greatly appreciated!

Deleted
Not applicable

Soooo everyone. Planner peeps may not make it available via UI yet but we can make our own notifications and calendar now with these ;). I present to you planner flow triggers!  https://t.co/xDUF3J52XS

Brass Contributor

Any news on the coming features? :)

Version history
Last update:
‎Jun 22 2017 01:41 PM
Updated by: