Our Vision for Planner in Microsoft Teams
Published Dec 19 2016 02:12 PM 60.9K Views
Microsoft

With the release of Microsoft Teams, Office 365 customers can now use Planner in the same interface as their shared chat-based workspace. While Teams is in Preview, the Planner tab will have a limited feature set, with a plan to roll out a fully featured integration in the upcoming months. Even with limited features, we have received plenty of positive feedback in addition to questions about what the fully featured Planner integration will look like, and we wanted to share our plans about how we envision the future of Planner and Microsoft Teams:

 

-We will make working across Planner and Microsoft Teams a seamless experience, where plans fully integrate across applications.  

-We will add support for selecting your existing Plans from Planner as Tabs in Microsoft Teams. 

-From a Planner Tab in Teams, you will be able to launch the full Planner experience to access capabilities like Charts and other views. 

-Users will the ability to have multiple plans per Office 365 Group within Planner.  When we complete that work, you’ll also be access any of the Plans you started in Teams as well. 

 

While there are currently some feature differences between the Planner tab in Microsoft Teams and the Planner web experience, our overall direction is to support the same core feature set – attachments, notifications, “group by” views, and others. We have a few other integration ideas in the pipeline, and we’ll share more details as we further develop our plans. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please submit them on our UserVoice site.

 

TeamsPlanner screenshot.png

 

 

52 Comments
Bronze Contributor

Waving hi, Dave! Kudos to you and the team for sharing Planner + Teams progress. 

Copper Contributor

Great info....Any idea when we can expect Planner and Teams in the Government Tenant?

Thanks for giving an update on the future of Planner in MSTeams. One feature I like in the full version of Planner is that conversations can be had on a task card. This works well with Outlook Groups. Do you plan to enable IM/Team based conversation integration with task cards? 

This sounds like lots of new work, but is it delaying those features you announced previously? Multiple assignment and guest access were really important and we waited a long time for them now.
Microsoft

@Steven Collier Hi Steven - multi-user assign and external user access are both among our top priorities to ship in early 2017 

Copper Contributor

How does MS Project Server fit in this vision? Is there still a justification to hang on to Project Server in case customer moved/moves to Office 365 and have Planner + Teams in the package deal?

Deleted
Not applicable

How does Microsoft Teams works with consumer Skype and the Skype for Business? I just don't get it because MS Teams is only available in all the Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise plans, right? Not in the Office 365 Home plans. So where is the logic behind this?

Copper Contributor

Thanks for sharing the vision, would be good to see this on a regular basis for MS-Teams features.

Copper Contributor

@Dave Heller : can you please share some light on when the ETA for being able to use existing plans of planner in teams will be? That would be highly appreciated.

Microsoft

@Lars Heinemann our goal is to be able to select existing plans from the web app to Teams by April and possibly sooner

Deleted
Not applicable

To Planner, please add email notifications!! for create, Assign etc events including Delete.

Brass Contributor

It would be nice if this blog were updated more frequently. Over 2 months since last update.

I do know that Planner in Teams now support links like regular Planner does, but not file attachments - but links are good!

Still, I found out accidentally last week. I don't know if that was added on Jan 1 or the day I noticed it.

With a product in as much flux as Teams is, it would be nice to at least get monthly updates on "here is what is new/changed" similar to how we get updates on Office apps, PowerBI, Office 365, etc.

Deleted
Not applicable

An update on this would be great. We have a lot of users already working on Planner and we are trialing Teams; the lack of ability to draw existing plans into a new team is a real barrier at the moment to making it a viable solution. 

Microsoft

@Deleted we're working on updating notifications, but don't have timing on when it'll publish yet.

 

@Ed Hansberry I'm just the Planner guy :) I'll pass your feedback to the Teams product group. My guess is that until Teams is GA, there won't be regular updates on features etc, but afterwards there's a greater likelihood.

 

@Deleted If you create a Team from an existing Group, you have the ability to import an existing Plan from that Group. Let me know if this is the functionality that you're speaking of?

Bronze Contributor

Thanks @Dave Heller - I just saw a notice in the O365 Admin tool that Teams is being turned on by default by the end of Q1, so hopefully then~


Copper Contributor

Thanks @Dave Heller, the functionality we are after is to be able to add an existing plan to a Teams Group. At the moment when you try to add an existing plan it only lists the default one created with Teams.

Deleted
Not applicable

[Edit] deleting due to double post.

Deleted
Not applicable

@Dave Heller - I've just discovered that you can actually add an existing planner to Teams through the Create Team menu (it was a little obscure as it's a hyperlink to the functionality), so not very intuitive. @Rohan Nunn - I think you'll appreciate this. The only issue that I've encountered so far is that you can't add comments on the plans....you'd have to login to planner to do that; most other functionality appears to be preserved.

 

CreateTeam.jpg

Bronze Contributor

That is new oliver. Coudln't do that a few weeks ago. I don't know when this changed though as there is no blog or other "this just released" mechanism. These features just pop into existence and we are supposed to figure them out via osmosis.

Copper Contributor

Hi! Im wondering when the features to comment on a task and upload attachment directly to a task will be available via Teams / Planner?

And when one choose to see the Plan via the "goto website" the plan does not exists?

 

Br

 

Christian

Deleted
Not applicable

One missing item in Planner for Teams that is huge is the ability to attach files. We can link but not attach. So until that is avaiable we have to postpone the use of Teams becuase I dont want the team to have to navigate to an outside tool for planning. 

Bronze Contributor

Micah, I am not sure why there is no ability to attach files, but you can put the files in teams in the same channel as the planner and link to them there. The advantage to that is, there is just one file so whether you access it via the task in Planner, in the Teams UI, from Excel (or whatever), or via OneDrive if sync'd to their PC, the one file is always up to date.

 

So no outside tool is necessary.

 

Ideally I'd like to see them add "Attach" though and then have teh file dropped into a folder in the channel, just like they do today with email attachments that are part of an email mailed to the channel conversation thread.

Copper Contributor

Hey :) Any news on the progress here? The Teams+Planner combo is really great and the planned integration extension is sorely needed

Steel Contributor

Hey @Dave Heller, will we (or do we now) have to ability to move tasks across plans? 

 

For example, as of now Planner doesn't support multiple plans per group, so we have a project team as a group and one plan associated with that. This one plan contains all of the tasks irrespective of topic. Recently, we found that inside of Teams we can have multiple plans in the form of one plan per channel. So, we created a Team out of that existing group and imported the existing group-plan into the general channel. Next up, we created channels for each topic and created plans for each channel. Going forward, we would want to move topic-specific tasks from the main group-plan into the respective topical plans inside channels.

 

Is this (or will this) be possible?

 

Brass Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller,

Great job on the Planner app, we love it!

However we are limited by the lack of the following features:

1- Ability to see "secondary" plans for a group (created in Teams) in the Planner app

2- Ability to move tasks from one Plan to another (witin the same group)

3- Ability to add more than 6 labels

4- Ability to apply filters based on labels

 

I could not see any of those in the roadmap, but based on my reading here and on the voice sites, those are pretty awaited.

Could you provide some insight about the potential inclusion of those features in the roadmap with a rough high level ETA? 

Thank you so much!

Microsoft

@Abhimanyu Singh - the ability to copy and paste a task is on our near-term roadmap, so you should expect that in the upcoming months. 

 

@Nicolas Maurel - good to hear from you again! Let me address each item:

 

1. We want to enable users to view/edit plans created in Teams from the Planner web app. I don't have a date yet, but we receive this feedback frequently and it is a high priority. 

2. We will have copy/paste in the upcoming months, although it's not precisely dragging tasks from one plan to another. 

3. No specific plans now to add the number of labels, but it is a feature that we're tracking in terms of user feedback.

4. Over the next year (give or take), there will be far more granular controls of how to organize charts views. 

 

Let me know if you have further questions!

 

Dave

Steel Contributor

Thank you @Dave Heller.

 

Copy-paste on the roadmap is good news. Hope to see it land soon. Could it also be a cut-paste to move a task? Drag-and-drop may not be actually required, it would too clunky across plans anyway. "Move to" > "Select Plan" > "Select Bucket" should be good enough. 

 

Regarding your note to @Nicolas Maurel about "We want to enable users to view/edit plans created in Teams from the Planner web app [..]" - We are able to do that right now. There are three problems with that currently:

 

  1. We have to click "view in browser" from inside Teams and then it opens up in Planner. These plans are not available as direct links in the left-pane of Planner hub. 
  2. The tasks however are visible directly under "My Tasks" from inside Planner, with a caption on second line indicating the plan it belongs to. Difficult to spot, but they are all there. Maybe a bit of coloring might help.
  3. When a plan from Teams is being viewed in Planner, then the name on the top banner is not changing, it continues to show the name of the root-planner-plan. Otherwise, we can view the board and chart quite well of all plans. The name causes confusion and loss of context.
  4. Changing the name of the root-planner-plan changes the name of the associated O365-Group as well. This shouldn't happen. For our "Marketing" group, we may want to use a different name for the root-plan, say "Marketing Milestones". 

 

I do understand that all this is a work-in-progress and these will be sorted out in the coming days soon. It's been a good progress on Planner front. 

 

Deleted
Not applicable

Hi @Dave Heller,

 

In December you posted that you would roll out a fully featured integration between Planner and Teams in the upcoming months.

 

In January you mentioned April in another post but now it is end June and there is still no integration. Not even a little. :)

 

When can we expect to have Plans integrate with Teams?

Steel Contributor

Are Plans created within Teams completely separate from Plans created in Planner?  If I create one in Planner and then go to add a Plan tab in Teams, I don't see the Plan I created in Planner.  Same thing in reverse if I create it in Teams, I then can't see it in Planner...

Hi @Mike Boehm. Yes, a plan created in Planner is seperate from a plan created in Microsoft Teams. When you create a new plan in Planner, it will create an Office 365 group. The Group will be using Outlook as the default Conversation experience - i.e. an Outlook group, rather than a Microsoft Team or a Yammer group. Any comments you make on tasks within a plan will be reflected in the Outlook group conversations. 

When you create a Microsoft Team, it is also creating a new Office 365 group. Any plans you create in the channels of the Team are associated with the Team and it's channel. But they wont appear in the Planner website. 

However, while creating a new Microsoft Team, you can repurpose an Outlook group and it's plan, attaching it to the new Team. 

As you create your Team, you have an option to "add Microsoft Teams to an existing Office 365 group." That is, if you're an owner of an Office 365 group.

You can choose the group created when you created the plan. Once the Team is created using that group, you can add a tab for a plan and choose the existing plan. 

@Dave Heller covers the process in more detail, with video, in the following post. Bringing a Plan into Microsoft Teams.

Copper Contributor

@Darrell Webster do you expect there to be a change in that behavior? Our users love the Planner hub but want to see all of their Plans listed there, including those that were created in a Channel. Even better would be if the channel plans were in some way linked to the Plan that was created for the Team.

Side note - is this the reason you have to go to planner and open the plan before you can add it to the Team via a tab (is that by design)?

Microsoft

@Darrell Webster - Great overview, and spot on! 

 

@Amy Straley - We will ship updates to the Planner experience across the web app and Microsoft Teams over the course of the year, and we are certainly interested in linking all plans across Teams and Planner. Regarding having channel plans roll up to the Team plan, there's nothing planned for the near term, but there will be new reporting scenarios in future months that may accomplish a similar result. 

 

Let me know if there are further questions! 

@Amy Straley, I think the behaviour of opening the plan in Planner before adding to Teams is unusual.

If

  • the plan was originally created via Planner,
  • and the associated Outlook group has had Teams features added,

I would expect there would be no need to reauthenticate to add the existing plan as a tab in the Team. But we do continue to see 'mixed successes' with sharing session credentials across the different Office 365 services. 

Copper Contributor

@Darrell Webster Its actually for new Teams. Steps are: Create Team. Open Planner. Click on the Plan for that new Team to open it. Go back to your team. Click the + to add a tab. Choose Planner. If you dont do those steps, when you get to the last step you will not see the "Use an Existing Plan" option.

Where's the best place to follow the feed / updates for Planner? Roadmap site, or is there another resource? Thx

Bronze Contributor

If you figure it out @Christian Buckley let me know. So far, updates are posted to:

  • the Teams blog
  • The Office 365 blog
  • UserVoice (apparently this is where they have chosen to continue updating us on the external access feature)
  • The Teams twitter account

There is, AFAIK, no one place to get updates.

 @Ed Hansberry There's an app idea in there somewhere :)  In the meantime, looks like I am putting some bots to work to aggregate some things for me...

Copper Contributor

is there a place where the current functionality and cross integration is laid out in some useful fashion like a chart? Planner and Teams seem so convoluted right now I do not want to even attempt it. Is user friendliness on the horizon for new adopters?

Copper Contributor

September 2017

 

Hey MTC

any news ? deadlines ?

I would like to implement Teams across the studio, sync issues hold me back.

Can you say when all the features u have mentiond above (our vision) will be available ?

 

tnx

Om

Copper Contributor

Hello @Dave Heller,

 

I'm trying to figure out how we can leverage planner in teams in our organization.

The teams channels are a great tools. We create a team for each customer, and a channel for each customer project. Inside the channel we create a planner tab having the name convention "Client Project", because is the only way to identify the actions/tasks on the mobile app.

 

But now we have a really big problem: teams coordinators can't have a unified dashboard where they can see all the actions status of their team members.

For example when they go on planner hub, they can't see the plans created inside team channels, and then they can't add this plans in the favorite to see how the plan is going on.

Are we using the planner tab in the channel in the right way? Or there is some other intended use?

 

Thanks.

 

Gian

Copper Contributor

YES! We are in the exact same situation. We would love to participate in a focus group on this topic.

Copper Contributor

I have the exact same problem as @Gianpiero Porchia!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller

I thank you for setting up this channel of communication. It is really useful to have direct contact with someone so near to the product. 

We have been using O365 in anger for over a year now. We are a globally distributed company and we bring together virtual teams that depend on all features of O365 to manage development and operations. It has been a real benefit.

We have experimented with Planner in O365 and really like the Kanban feel. It still has a long way to go as many people have already pointed out.

We are now moving to Teams and we have many plans in O365 that we need to move to Teams. I understand you can create Teams out of O365 Groups. That's great but we are also changing the way or working from O365 to Teams. We evolved our O365 structure in line with the functional hierarchical structure of the company. Teams give us the opportunity to reflect the real world of virtual teams. That means we must move the Plans from O365 Groups to separate Teams. BUT WE CAN'T DO IT! Because, it seems, the functionality does not allow it.

It looks like people have been asking for this for almost a year. Please when can we have that very simple function. Copy Tasks or Plans from one Team to another. It can't be that difficult.

Thanks for your understanding.

Microsoft
Hi Stuart - Thanks for the reply! Feel free to send me a message with your contact info so I can provide more help. We are working towards out-of-the-box templates for plans, but in the meantime you can use the Microsoft Graph API to copy plans.
Copper Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller

I sent an email to a guessed Microsoft email for you.

Mine is stuart.curley@ngahr.com

Regards

Stuart

Copper Contributor

Hi @Dave Heller,

 

Thanks so so much for the open communication here! I have the same exact question/situation @Gianpiero Porchia has above. I lead a team of global designers who work multiple projects and am curious to know how you’d set things up with Teams and Planner. The way @Gianpiero Porchia set things up makes complete sense to me. One big team with different channels for projects. What would you do? Would you create channels for “projects” oe would you create separate teams per project? The key for me will be the ability to oversee all project activity, tasks, etc. As @Gianpiero Porchia stated, management view is not effective that way. Thoughts? Thanks @Dave Heller!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Rob Fleming

We have set up several hundred projects. We started with creating one Team for each organisation functional team and then creating the projects as channels underneath that team. We had to roll that back and create one Team for each project. The reason is that each project involves different people. They may be a core of people from the organisational functional team but there are often a different selection of these people and always different people from different organisational functional teams. Therefore, we wanted to make sure that only the people actually doing something in the project were in the Team. The problem is when you create projects as channels we found that we had to add anyone involved to the Team which meant the Team just grew and grew. Furthermore, to us projects are finite pieces of work with a specific scope and a start and end date. We want to make sure that the Plan in Planner only has tasks for this project, again a limitation of you create the Project as a channel.

We may be wrong but this was our experience and our workaround.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Stuart

Copper Contributor

Thanks very much for the response @Stuart Curley! Makes sense. We'll be going down the path of projects as teams as well I think.

Copper Contributor

Thanks @Dave Heller, this thread has been very helpful. My department has been using Planner and Teams over the last few months and we have recently ran into the same issues that @Rob Fleming is having. A few people in our Department have created planners for individual channels but those planner tabs do not show up in the planner hub in the planner App. The tasks do show up in "My tasks" but obviously that only shows up when you get assigned a specific task. The need would be for supervisors having the ability to oversee all project activity and see progress from the planner hub and not having to go to each channel to see progress on tasks. 

 

Thanks

Brass Contributor

@Charles E Compain This has been a major issue with the Planner integration with Teams since day one.  MS have planned to do something about it, but you can up-vote it here to help ensure it gets the priority it deserves.

 

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16926463-need-full-capabilitie...

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