Planner Ignite Review and Roadmap
Published Nov 10 2017 03:05 PM 25.8K Views
Microsoft

A little over a month ago, the Planner team was in Orlando for Microsoft Ignite talking to users about their experience and learning what we can do to deliver an even better experience. We also had a joint breakout session with the Microsoft To-Do team and delivered our vision for the future of the task at Microsoft. For those who couldn't attend, this blog will share our review and news from the event and our roadmap for the next quarter.

 

Planner and To-Do Breakout Session

Our primary presentation at Ignite was a presentation of our vision for the future of the task in Office 365, including the latest updates to Microsoft To-Do and Microsoft Planner. We even debuted a demo for a bi-directional integration between Planner and To-Do!

 

 

Ignite Expo Review

There were so many great conversations this year relating to how people use Planner, what they want to see next, and general questions about features and availability. Here are the greatest hits from those conversations:

Microsoft Teams integrations

Our vision for the Planner integration in Microsoft Teams will continue to become reality over the next year. Many Planner users asked about when and how they can access their Teams-specific plans from the Planner web app. We are working towards being able to access Teams plans from the Planner web app, which should ship in the first quarter of 2018.

 

Multiple plans per group

Relatedly, users want to be able to create multiple plans per group, and we are also working towards that functionality as well, targeted for the first half of 2018. This feature will enable users to create new plans within existing groups, opening many more usage scenarios for Planner - more on that when we're closer to shipping.

 

Recently Shipped

Mobile app onboarding into Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based solution for management of mobile apps and devices. IT Admins can now manage Planner across iOS and Android mobile devices with Intune.

Mobile SSO + Mobile deep link

We have made two enhancements to the Planner mobile app to provide a smooth and seamless experience between Microsoft mobile apps. First, we enabled single sign-on to prevent the need to sign into Planner if you are already signed into a Microsoft enterprise mobile app, and second, we created a deep link between Planner and other Microsoft apps to enable a quick transition that is nearly unnoticeable. For example, clicking on a plan from the Microsoft Teams mobile app will bring you quickly into the Planner mobile experience without missing a beat.

Copy task

For tasks that multiple people need to complete, we have released the capability to copy a task within a plan. As seen in the image below, you can select which fields within the task that you want to copy, and the new task will surface in the same bucket.

Planner1.jpg

Also, check out the recent announcement for new Planner additions to Microsoft Flow!


Roadmap

At Ignite, we shared our near-term roadmap for Planner during our presentation. For those who couldn’t attend, here is the rundown:

Updates to assignment notifications and due date reminders 

There are a number of updates coming to Planner notifications that improve the user experience. Planner will send individual email notifications directly to the assignee(s) of a task.  If a task has a due date, Planner will also send due date reminders starting a week before a task is due. Users will be able to select their notification preferences in Planner settings to make sure that they’re only receiving notifications that they want to receive.

Planner2.png

iCalendar integration

Users will be able to publish an iCalendar feed for a plan or my tasks and view tasks in your Outlook (and other mail clients) calendar.
Planner3.png

Schedule view

The new schedule view – a very hot topic at Ignite – will enable users to both drag and drop tasks on the calendar to create start and due dates, as well as view all plan tasks on a calendar to have a visual cue of how much work is being done in the plan at a given time.
Planner4.png

 

External user access

Many users have asked us about external user access – inviting users outside of the Office 365 tenant to join the plan – and it’s something we look forward to delivering.

Groups naming policy

In line with overall Office 365 Groups policies, customers will see updates to naming policy, enabling admins to determine names for Office 365 Groups (and associated plans).

Microsoft Teams My Tasks App

As we work towards having a full featured Planner experience within Microsoft Teams, we will deliver the My Tasks page to Teams, via Teams’ apps functionality.
Planner5.png

 

Removing task limits from Microsoft Planner

Many users have asked about overall task limits within Planner, and by the end of December, we will have removed all functional limits to tasks for most usage scenarios. When users open their Planner boards, we will surface the tasks that are most relevant to them and provide options to fetch older tasks as needed.

 

We look forward to continuing the conversation on the Tech Community page and thank you all who could make it to Ignite this year!

 

Cheers,

Planner Team

13 Comments
Deleted
Not applicable

Great news!

 

Planner was that kind of app I just tried out of curiosity without knowing anything about, but has quickly grown to become one of my absolute favorite apps. And the same goes for all my colleagues I have introduced Planner to.

 

Really looking forward to the deeper integration with Teams, and the calendar view. 

 

However, in the name of reducing the amount of emails (which is one of the reasons we started using Teams) I am hoping for other alternatives than getting notifications by email. Like push notifications via the phone app or something. 

 

But it keep up the good work!

Iron Contributor
Please tell me that filtering on labels is coming. Please...
Copper Contributor

There are two big barriers to Planner adoption:

  1. People have used Trello - people who are more likely to adopt Planner have previusly used Trello and find the user experience much better, for example being able to drag and scroll with cards which is so so painful on Planner
  2. Don't understand how to use it - those who haven't used Trello find it a very different way of working, and it's quite hard to convince them to adopt a tool when it lacks basic functionality

Planner is getting there - however there's still some fucntionality missing and times where the user experience is really quite poor...

Brass Contributor

great news anyway))) it's a real pleasure to be part of these huge improvements being an O365 services' power user. However it's a bit difficult to find out what's a meaning or main issue of To-Do app while there is a powerful planner?

Silver Contributor

Basic Export to Excel on the roadmap?

Steel Contributor

So glad to see investments being made to Planner!

Copper Contributor

Is there a way for an admin to view all tasks for all users? I am also not seeing tasks that are created in Teams via the planner app tab, in the actual Planner desktop app. Everything else look the same as far as the Team that the task is created in.

Iron Contributor

Are these roadmap items the same as the roadmap items on the roadmap, or what differentiates?

 

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=%26freeformsearch=planner

 

I'm not seeing any of the things you said were released actually listed as launched, rolling out, or previously released, but I do see a couple of the things you mention as coming near-term as "in development", but not others.

Copper Contributor

I'm just baffled by the lack of Search and Delve integration (also in Teams)?

 

Our firm would jump on Planner in a hot minute, but without Search it's a non starter.

 

How on earth is this not top of the enhancements list? Surely Search across tools is a fundamental?

Microsoft

Hi @Dave Heller, how are you? Hope fine!

I would like to have more details about the removal of task limits on Planner.

My customer is concerned about these limits:

- 250 assigned tasks per user irrespective of plans
- 1500 tasks can be created by an user irrespective of plans

- 250 Active tasks (Not Started, In Progress) per plan 

 

Will they also be removed?
Do we have a date for it? Dec/2018?


Waiting for your thoughts here.
Thanks a lot!

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

I´m searching for a solution on copy a bucket full of tasks to another bucket like an template.

I have 20-25 bucketlist with same tasks (14 tasks, 55 "checklist").

 

Copper Contributor

Integration between Planner and To-Do was great news back then. When will this feature be publicly available for O365 customers?

Iron Contributor

Gerald is right. We were on the verge of ditching Planner 10 months ago because you couldn't see all your tasks together in one place, which makes it as almost useless for managing your day or week, something that To-Do does well. Foolishly we stuck with it because of the announcement. 10 months later and we still don't even have an update, yet alone it being launched. It's such a basic necessity it's inexplicable how Planner was ever launched without the ability to see tasks assigned to you alongside all your other tasks in Outlook. 

Version history
Last update:
‎Apr 29 2019 07:20 AM
Updated by: