Microsoft Teams: Using Planner to stay organized

Microsoft

New blog post on using Planner in Microsoft Teams. Do you agree/disagree? How are you using Planner? Discuss. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/skypehybridguy/2017/08/30/microsoft-teams-using-planner-to-stay-...

7 Replies

@Matt Soseman wrote:

How are you using Planner?


@We're not. We gave it a try a few months ago, but the main issue we ran in to was the lack of notifications (or, if a poor soul subscribes to a Group, the firehose of email notifications). Most of my users are just now discovering how to collaborate outside of Outlook, but they still rely on email to organize their day and keep them aware of changes. In the example in the blog post you linked, the only reason that Adele Vance knew a task was assigned to her was because she was @ mentioned. We can't expect Plan creators to @ everyone for every task, and we can't expect everyone to visit Planner every day to check if they have tasks, especially if they aren't frequently given tasks.

 

When explaining the lack of notifications to my users, one said, and I quote, "that's dumb", and I don't disagree.

Matt,

Thanks for the blog post; some of this information was new to me (like the integration with Teams). We tried Planner and it failed bigly. The initial concept was very well received ("just like Trello!") and aimed to solve a very real problem ("we still use email for delegating and tracking assignments!"). However, once we got into daily usage, the many, MANY problems of Planner caused users to sour on the experience quickly. Notifications is the biggest problem, but there are lots of other glitches that also deep-sixed the roll-out attempt (like for example, it's impossible to copy/paste individual tasks). Nice try, Microsoft, but start preparing a graveplot for Planner next to Google Wave.

All great points Stephen, and I really appreciate the feedback.

Thanks Austin, I appreciate the feedback. All great points and I don't disagree with you or the others in this thread. Please keep the conversation and discussion going on this topic.

Sure. At this point, we're hoping that the new To-do app (based on Wunderlist) can provide us with more usability than Planner did, but it hasn't been deployed to our instance yet. Perhaps we'll give Planner a second look after a few months (assuming that it improves) but it will be hard to overcome the initial, negative impression that it left on our team.

We would like to, but we can't.  It's just missing way too many basic features. 

 

We have many processes that are repetitive, so we really need:

  • to be able to copy/paste tasks - but Planner can't do this.
  • to re-use (or copy) checklists - but Planner can't do this, or
  • to create a template task/checklist combination that can be applied again and again - but Planner can't do this

For me, the bigger issue is that Planner seems to have been largely abandoned despite your post.
Look over at UserVoice, where updates are months old - in many many cases over a year.  Many items flagged as "thinking about it" for over a year, or "started" over a year ago but with no updates (or results, apparently). 

And just hundreds of customer requests BEGGING for updates, but with no communication from the Microsoft Planner team.  Just look at the request for templates as a good example. 
https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/11332998-pr...

Not to mention that MANY of the items notes as planned or working on it don't appear anywhere on your roadmaps, which appear to be way out of date.  Really, how seriously is Microsoft working on this if it can't even get a roadmap updated ?

 

I have to agree with @Austin Lasseter that it will be hard to overcome negative perceptions - and quite frankly, by the time the Planner team gets its act together, we will be SO imbedded with something like Trello that it will be hard to move. 

Summary: Planner is unusable as is for most of our business needs.  Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing anything about  improving the product, or communicating intentions.  Given the lack of communications/development, I'd say you have a problem on the Planner leadership team.  You need to figure out whether you want the product to work, or just kill it off as "Good idea, bad execution".

While we mostly love O365, Planner has turned out to be a great disappointment. 

I agree 100% with Luis. I really want to use, but just can't unless some basics are addressed.

The allure of Planner is that it comes with the Office 365 suite. But it is missing far to many essential features for managing tasks and time.

A bit of resource implementing the requested features would bring this product to an acceptable level and hopefully excite your users that have committed to Office 365.