Teams Search doesn't work for finding tasks in Planner, et al

Brass Contributor

I just migrated my management team to Teams, and I just now discovered how limited the Search feature is.

 

Let's say that we have a product called Thing. From what I can tell, if I search for Thing in the search bar, it searches the following:

 

  • People
  • Messages exchanged in Chats
  • Posts made in Channels
  • Files

It seems that it does not search the following:

 

  • Tasks in Planner that include "Thing"
  • Buckets in Planner that include "Thing"
  • Comments made on Tasks in Planner
  • Notes in Planner

Basically, Planner is what we're introducing during this transition. I understand the Wiki tabs are also not searchable. I understand that I can go into the Planner module and filter by keyword...if the task is assigned to me.

 

But if I wanted to find all tasks that involved "Thing," I'm out of luck. I would have to go into each instance of planner in each channel and filter for "Thing." Is that correct? Is there another workaround I've missed?

 

Lastly, I haven't seen any substantial posts in User Voice that applied to this. I saw this post and it has a paltry 92 votes. And 80 pages of results when you search for "Search." Any suggestions on a post that I can throw my vote behind?

14 Replies

Hello @cshortldi 

I believe and hope that Tasks will support a better task management experience in Microsoft Teams including a more comprehensive search etc.

Regarding your question: "Any suggestions on a post that I can throw my vote behind?". This post might be interesting. 

 

I hope it helps.

Jarbas Horst

Let's have a hope :-), but not so sure Task Search will be a thing soon...it's not only a question of searching tasks in Teams, in general we don't have support for Tasks search in Microsoft 365 and that's the gap that is causing we don't have it also in Teams

@cshortldi this is a good point. There is a way around how to search notes in Teams.

@cshortldi Go check out the "Filter by Keyword" solution to the problem of searching for items by name in Teams Planner / Tasks that I finally discovered here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/msteams_tfb-msteams_task-msteams_mngtask/ctrl-f-se...

Great answer given by: "Celso Oliveira 77", as follows:

"... Selecting the dropdown shows you all your filtering options. You can filter by Due, Label, Bucket, and Assignment. Or, if you are searching for a specific task but can’t remember which bucket it is in, you can also search by keyword. Planner will search all your tasks and deliver all task cards containing that keyword.

Unfortunately so far there is no option via the shortcut key CTRL + F..."

@OW123456789  Unfortunately keyword filtering only finds it if the text is in the Title. 

I cant' seem to figure out how to search for a task by words that show up in the description or comments. Anyone know how to do that?

 

Also, searching with the main Teams search bar does not find ANY tasks, regardless of where the term is stored. (even title).

Well into 2022, I see no indications of this fundamental problem being solved?

@cshortldi its now end Jan 2022 and still there is no work-around nor out and out solution for this issue (and many other functions-have your tried to create a Planner Task in Outlook?).

Having implemented Teamwork Projects since it's inception, and Avasa, Clickup, Basecamp and Trello, I can say that Tasks By Planner and Teams in general are not sufficiently functional to replace these other competitive options. The only reason my company migrated to Teams was due to an incompatibility the others had with our ERP. I should've ditched the ERP instead. Teams and Task By Planner has turned out to be a complicated version of Google Tasks loosely combined with the free version of Trello. I only hope MisterSofty gets their game on before we cross the threshold of financial no-return.

“Filter” is the solution to the problem raised on this thread. Instead of having a search feature, the user needs to click on “filter” and type in the word they want to find in their task on the board or list.

Easy when you know how!
“Filter” is the solution to the problem raised on this thread. Instead of having a search feature, the user needs to click on “filter” and type in the word they want to find in their task on the board or list.

Easy when you know how!
Easy only if you know which Planner board you need to be in…need to be able to search across all channels/planners
does not work for searching in comments which is what most people want

@OW123456789 this doent appear to search words in the checklists. Just the Planner task title. Using the filter is looking for fields not text in the checklists. 

@OW123456789

 

Thanks for the filter search suggestion, it has solved my issue. 

 

It is noted that I do separate searches in All Active and Completed.

 

Works like a charm.   :)