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The new Microsoft Planner: New task features for organizations with frontline workers

Microsoft

Apr 22, 2024

Earlier this month we announced that the new Microsoft Planner has begun rolling out to General Availability. As part of the new Planner, we’re enhancing task publishing, a feature designed to increase clarity for frontline workers about what work is required and increase visibility for the organization on how that work is going. More specifically, we're releasing four new features based on the top requests we’ve received across frontline organizations.

We’re happy to report that these new capabilities have started rolling out as part of the new Planner:

Assign training and policy tasks to frontline employees (task list for each team member)
Automatically send repeat tasks to frontline locations (task list recurrence)
Make it mandatory to provide input back to the org (form completion requirement)
Make it mandatory to get approval for work completed (approval completion requirement)

These features are being enabled for users who have the new Planner experience, so it is expected that not everyone will see them immediately. The approval completion requirement is coming soon to the new Planner, and the three other features are available today in the new Planner experience. You'll find them within the task publishing experience.

Task publishing support for training and policy tasks

Task publishing allows central leaders to create a list of tasks, distribute those tasks to multiple locations, and monitor execution across locations.

One of the top requests has been the ability for organizations to publish tasks that each employee at a frontline location must complete – for example, to send training tasks or new policy acknowledgment tasks to all team members at designated frontline locations.

This feature will appear in task publishing as a new type of task list for each team member. When publishing a task list for each team member, you can select the locations that should receive the task list, as usual. Once you confirm the locations, a copy of each task in the list will be created for every employee at each of the chosen locations. When these tasks are created for each employee, they’ll be created in a plan for the specific employee rather than the plan for the team. Once the list has been published, you’ll have access to simple reporting to monitor completion.

Task publishing demo showing the menu for creating a new list, which now has two options: For each team and For each team member.

Task list recurrence

Another top feature request has been making it easier to manage recurring tasks across frontline locations, such as tasks for completion of regular site inspections and compliance walks.

With task list recurrence, you'll be able to apply a recurrence pattern to a task list, with options for daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly intervals. Once you publish a recurring list, task publishing will take care of scheduling all future publications of those tasks, so the list automatically publishes at the specified cadence going forward.

From a wide range of customer conversations, we know this will be a big timesaver for distributing repeat tasks across frontline locations. Once the recurring task list is scheduled to publish, central teams will have less to manage when distributing the tasks to frontline locations, making it easier for the org to ensure the right work is completed on time at the right places.

Demo of list recurrence choices for a list. We choose a monthly cadence for this list.

Form or survey completion requirement

We're also introducing two new completion requirements, which enable your organization to ensure the right steps are taken before the task can be marked complete.

The first new completion requirement is the form completion requirement, an integration with Microsoft Forms. When you use task publishing to create a task, you’ll have an option to add a requirement for completion of a designated form. When you publish that task, each recipient team will be unable to mark the task complete until a form response is submitted by a member of that team.

As with any form you create via Microsoft Forms, you have a range of options on the types of questions you can include. You can ask for a text response or ask respondents to select from multiple choices. You can also require a file upload, so that each recipient team must share a photo of the completed work, if you so choose. What's more, you can use conditional branching to make additional questions appear or not appear based on the answers provided. For example, if a user chooses an answer that indicates non-compliance with a company policy, you can ask the user follow-up questions to collect additional details. That's one more way form completion requirements make it easier to get information back from your frontline teams.

Demo of the form completion requirement

Approval completion requirement

You’ll also soon have access to approval completion requirements, an integration with Microsoft Approvals. When you use task publishing to create a task, you’ll be able to designate that an approval is a prerequisite for a task to be marked complete. When you publish that task, each recipient team will be unable to mark the task complete until an approval is requested and subsequently granted.

A user on the recipient team who opens the task will be able to choose the appropriate person on the team to request their approval. The names of the requestor and the designated approver are reflected in the task details, so other members of the team can see the status and help facilitate the approval of the work. This will make it easier to heighten accountability of recipient teams for important tasks your org needs them to complete.

Demo of the approval completion requirement

Task publishing demo video

Watch the full video below to see an overview of task publishing as a whole, including other features we’ve previously rolled out, such as checklist completion requirements, text formatting in the notes fields, our new API capabilities for advanced reporting, and improved options for Teams activity feed notifications.

Video overview of task publishing, including these new features

Additional resources:

• Learn how to setup task publishing by creating a team hierarchy
• Read the blog post announcing that rollout of the new Planner to General Availability has begun
• Watch the new Planner demo videos for inspiration on how to get the most out of the new Planner app in Microsoft Teams.

Updated Nov 11, 2024

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AndrewFriedman

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12 Comments

AndrewFriedman
Microsoft
Sep 07, 2024
giuliob170 Sure thing. Here are answers to your questions:

Q: Do the premium features require creation of a new plan?
Creating a new plan is an easy way to get the new capabilities. Also, there is a new feature rolling out that will allow you to to upgrade an existing basic plan, which effectively transforms the plan and tasks into a new premium plan.

Q: Can users who have Microsoft 365 but do not have a P1/P3/P5 license still access the tasks in the plan?
Yes, Microsoft 365 users still have the ability to modify tasks in premium plans the same way they could in a basic
plan. This means that they have edit access to capabilities like assigning a task, changing a task’s start or
finish dates, or adding an attachment to a task. The additional license will be required to view and edit premium
capabilities like Gantt charts or goals. You can see the list of capabilities by license at https://learn.microsoft.com/office365/servicedescriptions/project-online-service-description/project-web-service-description.

Check out the Ask Me Anything event on Tuesday, September 17th at 9am Pacific Time if you have any additional questions. More info here: The new Microsoft Planner: What’s New and What’s Coming Next - Microsoft Community Hub
giuliob170
Copper Contributor
Aug 14, 2024
Thanks for this article. If I understand correctly, Planner Plan 1 features are only available on newly created plans. Will these plans only be accessible to users with a Plan 1 license or will users who only have Planner included in Office 365 Business also be able to view the basic information?
Forrest_H
Steel Contributor
Aug 09, 2024
Thanks for the confirmation. I made that assumption due to my other experiences and just about Upload Hierarchy.
I wanted to be sure because all the other Documents show the command to use in PowerShell but no examples of the output.
It was confusing when the column returned right next is the InternalId which also seems to be unique.
If the Get-Teams had a Select to further restrict the results it wouldn't have been confusing.
AndrewFriedman
Microsoft
Aug 09, 2024
Hi Forrest_H , you'll want to use the Group ID for the Team when filling out the TeamId column of the CSV file. I'll make a note to see if we can make this more clear next time we update the documentation, which I imagine will benefit others as well, since this same GUID is referred to as Group ID in some contexts and Team ID in other contexts.
Forrest_H
Steel Contributor
Aug 09, 2024
AndrewFriedman
Thanks for this article. Can you tell me which of the resulting IDs from the PowerShell "Get-Team | Export-Csv TeamList.csv" to extract List of Teams is the one that has to be Uploaded as TeamId?
There is 2 in the CSV file from PowerShell Output.
GroupId and InternalId
In many documents on MS sites also say TeamId but in most of the portals and outputs it has GroupId.
The GroupId returned is more typical of the GUID of Azure/Entra but I don't want to go through trouble of creating an Upload file if I should be using the InternalId
AndrewFriedman
Microsoft
Jul 31, 2024
Hi tcybermancer Thank you for the suggestion - we don't support notifying the task assignees about task comments today, but we understand the scenario and we're looking at ways to support this type of notification in the future.
tcybermancer
Copper Contributor
Jun 26, 2024
In our planner, when comments are added to a task, they go to the team's group mailbox. Will there be a feature that allows comments to go to both the Team mailbox and the individuals who are assigned the task? Comments are often overlooked by the tasked when remote working.
AndrewFriedman
Microsoft
Jun 12, 2024
Replies to the previous questions and comments

1. Timing for availability in Sweden stinarigback
The features in this blog post are part of the task publishing feature. Task publishing requires a hierarchy of teams to be uploaded by an admin as a prerequisite for enabling the feature. The hierarchy of teams allows someone in a parent team to publish to child teams at the bottom of the hierarchy. You can learn more about the setup steps here.

2. Timing for ability to upgrade existing plans colbourne25
If I'm understanding your question correctly, it's about when you'll be able to take an existing Planner plan and convert/upgrade it to a premium plan. If you are referring to Planner plans that are not used with task publishing, you should be able to do this today. When you select the standard plan, you should see the view options at the top of the screen, and some of those views should have a diamond icon next to them. If you choose that view, you should see an option to upgrade the plan. (Keep in mind that some view options may appear in the ... menu.) It is not currently possible to upgrade plans that are in use with task publishing. If that's what you had in mind, please let us know, as this would be helpful input and we may have a few follow-up questions.

3. Really the top-requested features? PetrKrenzelok
Yes, the top features for Planner as a whole are tracked here. These features in this blog post are more specifically the top-requested features from frontline organizations. Frontline organizations are those organizations at which the majority of employees are distributed across many different locations, and the company depends on those distributed "frontline" employees to carry out work at those respective locations in order to achieve key business results. Examples include store employees in a retail organization, medical providers at clinics in a health care organization, and factory operators in a manufacturing organization. We have designed special features for frontline organizations, including a feature known as task publishing. These features allow frontline organizations to centrally define and distribute tasks across those locations (providing clarity for frontline managers and workers) and see how that work is going (providing clarity for business leaders). All the new and improved capabilities above are in response to the requests we've received from frontline customers. On that note, if you're part of a frontline organization and you have a different set of requests, we'd be interested to hear a little more about your requests and the related use cases if you're willing to share.

4. Where to find task publishing features and the differences between the premium plans KianaDiaz

Where to find these features: The features in the blog post above are part of the task publishing experience, which available in the Planner app in Microsoft Teams on desktop/web, as long as your organization has uploaded a hierarchy of teams. The hierarchy of teams defines which teams can publish to other teams -- someone who's a member of a parent team will be able publish to any of their child teams at the bottom of the hierarchy. An admin must define and upload this hierarchy as a prerequisite for using this feature. You can learn more about the setup steps here.

Differences between the premium licenses: Here is a summary that provides an overview of the license options for the premium capabilities: Compare All Planner Options and Prices| Microsoft Planner

Thanks to each of you for your comments and questions. I hope this info will help. Also, I apologize for the slow response time. I'll aim to reply faster in the future.
KianaDiaz
Copper Contributor
May 06, 2024
Hello,
I'm working on testing this new fixture, but I can't find them. Could someone please share the details of the different premium plans and what they offer, so I can compare them and see which one suits our needs? for example we want to test the sharing plan option, approval for task completition, task publication, etc.
PetrKrenzelok
Iron Contributor
Apr 24, 2024
Are those really a top requested features? Seems like being delivered by the completly separate team living in another dimension of reality. So many much more useful features the community asks for all the time 😞