SOLVED

Not receiving Planner comments in Outlook inbox

Iron Contributor

I used to receive all task comments in my Outlook inbox but this functionality seems to be broken. Now I might receive 1 out of 10 comments in my inbox, or none at all some days. I would like to at least receive a desktop notification when a new message arrives in the Planner group.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!

61 Replies

Duplication of requests is common problem with UserVoice.

However, while that request has a ton of votes, I don't think anyone should vote for it now.

It was created back when users where being notified of almost every action on every task and the original post is a plea to change that behaviour...which MS did, bringing us to the unsatisfactory functionality we see today.

The one I posted addresses today's Planner notifications.

@chtran  Any updates on this?   It is really causing a lot of frustration at our company.  If you are assigned a task you should get an email when someone comments, even if you've never commented yourself.  At least give us a Setting to change.

@Charlie Tran - this was a very bad attempt to solve one issue (too many updates) and then create another.

 

1. Owners of a plan often want all updates to all tasks sent to their inbox.

2. If you assign a task to someone surely you must want them to get updates on that task to their inbox??

3. We now have a situation where users who have followed the group and are expecting all messages to the group to come to their inboxes are now missing updates which means work items and issues are getting lost. 

 

We are now in a situation where we are needed to look at alternative systems to run plans with. My board has lost faith in the solution as items they were working on have had issues caused by breaks in the flow of communications. It is a disaster for the uptake of teams internally and now in our customers, as they don't want separate systems for planning outside of the teams environment but have to because of the really poor choices MS have made in how to run alerts and updates on tasks.

 

the design spec suggested by @wlyter in this thread seems the best solution by far.

 

As suggested elsewhere, uservoice has many people asking for better alerting functionality and control within planner but they are spread across loads of posts. if you collected them all together it would be very close to the top of the most requested items.

@Jason Drew  Has anyone tried the following work-around?

 

(Yes, I believe MS should have created an enhancement by now... but they haven't. Seems like there are a lot of smart minds out here... so thought to share 1 work-around.)

 

The main issue that I've been experiencing is the notifications... either (a) the Assigned people do NOT get notified because they didn't previously comment AND (b) any person who has commented will get an email notification - bombarding people's emails OR making it useless as they will disable the notifications.

 

WORK-AROUND... 2 parts... what if all comment notifications were disabled AND if someone needs to be contacted, either add them to the card OR remove/re-add to the card? IF there is a current trigger to notify when people are Assigned, then couldn't we use that as a work-around - to notify people? Not a fan of work-arounds... but this seems a pretty basic task to implement.

 

Thoughts? Any other work-arounds?

WorkAround:

So for the creator I have a work around that appears to work for the assigned members.  (At least until this is fixed as it should be steps 3 -5 will be eliminated with a fix)

 

Steps:

1. Creator(owner) creates a Task

2. Creator Adds all appropriate Team members to the Task

3. Creator enters a generic Comment

4. Creator gets email that a comment was entered

5. Creator (In Outlook) ReplysAll and adds the email addresses of each assigned Team Member in the TO section of the email.

 

At this point, it appears that any future comment on that task will go to the team that was included on the ReplyAll.  

NOTE: Any new team members added will likely still have to either go through this exact same step or have to comment on the task before they will receive any updates.

 

Good luck and this is a headach that really should be resolved.

@Critterdawg Thanks for the suggestion. It's a pretty cumbersome workaround but I'll give it a try.

The assignee needs to get email notifications by default.  This is our single biggest complaint about Planner.

I absolutely agree and it is driving me insane.   It makes zero sense that the people assigned to the task don't automatically get a notification when there is a comment.  I am a family law attorney.  I manage 45 projects/clients (channels) that use Planner.    I can't keep up with the comments if I don't know they've been made.   So frustrating.  @Jason Drew 

@Jason Drew 

I am so irritated about the stupidity of the solution presented by MS that I even created an account to comment on this.

 

We are currently moving from a tool called Teamwork to Planner and my workaround for this oddly stupid problem will be the following:

1. Creator adds a task

2. Every person involved must post a comment

 

This way, everybody who the task has been assigned to, will follow the progress and get updates on comments. Mentioning people directly using @ would work, too. Hopefully, MS will get this fixed or integrated in MS Tasks.

@optimaly I am losing hope that they will ever fix this. MS keeps releasing new apps without fixing the old ones.

@Jason Drew Supposedly Microsoft Lists will replace Planner.  I think planner will be eventually discontinued.

I think you better move to MS Lists, as apparently it will replace Planner and I don't think any of those issues will ever be fixed and Planner will be discontinued.

@jdrapialt Oh, ok. I wasn't under the impression that Lists was supposed to replace Planner. I thought Lists was more for tracking inventory and other things that are compatible with a list format.

@Jason Drew I know, I have the same doubts, but apparently this is were things are going and it kind of makes sense. I will have to see if I can adapt to MS Lists, as I don't have experience with Airtable, Monday.com or anything like that.  Planner would be really great by only finxing notifications and permisions but I am losing hope this will ever happen and I am definately not implementing something with such incredible flaws in my department.

@jdrapialt It is a shame though because Planner does have a few nice features. I like attaching documents directly to a Planner task and the checkboxes for subtasks are nice.

I did see that Project for the web is now included in my subscriptions so I might check that out but I don't know if it is more suited for large projects.

@chtran I can see this change was necessary to reduce spam. This change probably serves more people than not; however, I happen to be on the boat where it does not.

 

The @name proposed may not work in situation where there are many people involved, and would require constant mentioning of their name. It also adds the risk of forgetting one name that may be important.

 

To satisfy everyone, my suggestion is this: Allow automatic emails to all members just like before the fix with a few changes.

 

1. Whoever feels like they are getting spammed or no longer wishes to receive the messages, can click on a link "remove me from future comment notifications" from the email. If they want to turn it back on, they can go back to that specific task and turn the notification feature back on.

 

2. Once someone turns their notification off from the comment, their icon has a bell slashed to indicate that they had opted out of receiving comments in their inbox. This allows the project leader/Manager to know who is following the comments.

 

3. Allows the Admin to lock or unlock the followers ability to opt in or out of receiving notification. This allows the Manager or project leader to decide who must receive the comment emails.

 

 

Would this work?

 

@Jason Drew has this been fixed? its hard to believe a project management tool doesnt have an @ function or ability for people assigned to the task to receive comments? Hope planner can benchmark Trello....

@tina_y2150 I have left Planner a while ago. I recommend ClickUp, it is very pleasant to use!

In planner we create tasks within a bucket. Each task is assigned to a relevant person or a group of people associated to that task.
For example I have a step in a bucket where 3 people are assigned to a task called “review”.
One of the three people is a graphic designer and the other 2 are reviewers.
On the due date, the graphic designer is required to attached the artwork file for the other 2 people to provide comments as the review process. It’s compulsory for both reviewers to put comments in the comments field.
At this moment if the graphic designer posts a comment saying “artwork file ready for review” then it’s important for the others to be prompted via an e-mail notification of this status and go in to provide the review as needed. This makes our workflow efficient. When the notifications don’t come through then is breaks our flow and we run late on tasks.

@optimaly did this every get solved? This is insane!!!! I too am having extreme issues. What is the point of assigning any task, if the assignment doesn't include comments?

 

What is more frustrating is that this feature is working for one team and not working for another??? Will these types of insane issues ever get solved??