SOLVED

Planner Limitations

Bronze Contributor

Hi Planner Team,
 
We have noticed that the following are the known limitations in Planner.
- 250 assigned tasks per user irrespective of plans
- 1500 tasks can be created by an user irrespective of plans

- 250 Active tasks (Not Started, In Progress) per plan [Updated 18 Aug 2017]


If an user need to overcome 250 assigned tasks limitation he has to unassign the tasks assigned to him.  The worst part to overcome 1500 created tasks limitation is to delete the tasks created by him.
 
These limitations seems to limit the planner usage. For the long term plans, users will get 250 tasks assigned and 1500 tasks created in a short span of time. Also these limitations are not well documented and this made us to fear about the hidden unknown limitations.
 
So in order to ease the Planner adoption we request you to declare the limitations and see the possibility to increase these limits. This will only help the organizations to adopt for Planner easily.  We have two clients of us who are worst affected by these limitations and reconsidering the usage of planner now.

115 Replies

Sorry to hear that @Omar Ali - what specifically is frustrating you with Planner?

 

Best regards,

 

Brian

Hey @Brian-Smith 

 

  1. Anyone (and I mean anyone that has access to Planner) can:
    1. Modify /Rename / Delete the Bucket and the ENTIRE contents.  Wow!  Who fell asleep on this job?  Admin can't stop this from happening!
    2. A team member can modify / rename / delete a task.  What's the point of assigning a task when a member of that task can delete it????
    3. A team member can modify / rename / delete the description.  What's the point of having a description when when a member can delete / modify and even change it????

Those alone would make Planner a COMPLETE USELESS product.  It should be PULLED out of production and put in an ALPHA THOUGHT process instead of production!  Ridiculous!  Whoever was in charge of this being released to the public should literally be fired.  

Thanks for the feedback @Omar Ali .  If you want something that ties things down a lot more then take a look at Project Online.  Feel free to vote on some topics on UserVoice if you feel strongly about these items.  I'm sorry it doesn't fit your needs.

Best regards,

Brian

Is there official documentation/article about Planner boundaries and limits?

I believe there should be one as most of professional software has this documented.

It's hard to make a deployment decision without knowing technical possibilities. 

@JonasSav 

There are a ton of issues that makes Planner lacking in Planning!

Big issues that makes you NOT want this in production:

1. ANY user, and I mean ANY user you add to the system can CHANGE, yes, CHANGE your plan!  What??? Someone was definitely asleep in this step.

2. ANY user, and I mean ANY user you add to the system can CHANGE, yes, CHANGE your TASKS!  What's the purpose of this system?  Beta testers?

 

@Omar Ali if this is an issue for you then there are other products in the work management space from Microsoft that might suit you better - take a look at Project Online and Project for the web.  Planner is about collaboration.

Best regards,

Brian.

@JonasSav we are constantly reviewing the various limits in Planner and as they are changing we do not list them.  In normal usage we find that customers are not impacted by the limits - as long as tasks are marked completed and eventually deleted (one limit is active tasks for example) then not usually a problem.  We have also seen customers hit limits for tasks for an individual when automation creates all tasks - but generally good housekeeping will keep you well within them.  What is your usage scenario that concerns you about the limits?

Best regards,

Brian

@Brian-Smith Thank you.  I'm aware of the other applications.  

 

Planner should be thrown away because of the facts I've mentioned above.  Even if someone mistakenly delete projects, move them, delete tasks, move them etc., how is that collaboration?  That's beyond absurd to have things like this on projects.  

@Brian-SmithWhat is the exact Planner roadmap though, please? When for the last time the product received any strategic updates? We are using it, but it is really lacking. Why are Teams introducing private channels, yet Planner can't have private /per user silos? What we also really miss is, that management tasks are filled-in by assistants, but we would like to get CEO notified. Tha last time I have checked, there is no "Garant" or so field, to fill in other persons watching the task, nor there is any ability to use mentions in comments, which would be sufficient ....

best response confirmed by VI_Migration (Silver Contributor)
Solution

@Santhosh Balakrishnan These numbers are way out of date.  Please ignore.

@Petr Krenželok there have been continual updates all the time.  Private channels are an interesting one - as it isn't just Planner that is missing here.  Many of the features of Planner use other technologies in the stack, like the group inbox, or the OneDrive storage - so not an easy task truly making this a feature for Private channels. Some of the more recent updates, export to Excel, copy task and copy plan, the new Priority field.  That said there is no intention to build features that would overlap with other options in the work management space.  

@Omar Ali you don't have to use it - but many, many people do use it and are very happy with it - and would not like us to throw it away.  I was recently at our Ignite conference and lost count of how many people approached me just to say they love Planner.  Does it suit every need?  Of course not, and for some of the reasons you state, but it certainly has its place.  That said the team continue to look at where we can improve - and I for one would like to see a recycle bin for Planner.

O365 dependance upon the rather flat Group concept is the limitation going thru many products. Copy task/plan are nice, but your fear of overlap with other products is really unfounded. Are we talking Project here? You have to licence separately for that and Project is really a different product. Sometimes, just little is needed to help probudt being much more useful. We don't mind user separation that much, but really - we need our CEO to watch replies to the tasks. How are we supposed to do it, if he can't be filled in as a Garant / Watching / call it whatever, or at least allowing to mention him in the comments section? He is not going to fill-in 400 tasks for the whole management team, assistants are. And IIRC, mentions in Planner were planned long time ago. This feature alone would make Planner MUCH more collaboration friendly - you can simply address ppl, which don't necessarily have assigned particular tasks ....

@Brian-Smith I don't.  I now urge people to use Google and more especially with people like you who CANNOT take responsibility to fix a broken system!

@Omar Ali sorry you feel that way about people like me.  Happy New Year.

Oh my, and i thought i can be annoying. Go away Omar to your sacred Google already one post was enough to provide your personal opinion. We were using Planner for a few years in a team and it was convenient for us to be able to edit each other tasks, to fix errors or fill missing information. Recycle bin would be great, although i don't remember us needing one.

But i still stand on the limits question here. Brian, this is the same we there told over and over here and it is not concrete or satisfying.

Thanks @Petr Krenželok, that is good feedback and I'd like to see @mentions and a recycle bin make it into the product soon.  I'm impressed with the new Teams integration that is coming in the early part of this year - and a new list view for tasks.

And yes, I appreciate Project is another license cost.  Have you seen the new Project?  That does close the gap a little between Project Online and Planner, and is lower cost than Project Online - and even uses some of the same look and feel as Planner.

Best regards,

Brian.

I wish I could tell it a different way @wroot .  We do seem to have stabilized on some of the limits now so maybe time for me to try again to get the product group to agree a published list, at least for some values.  For me and the other support staff it would be so much easier.

Best regards,

Brian 

Mentions would be really great! We use Planner for deparment tasks, management tasks, yearly bonuses tasks, we don't mind that much, that ppl see other's tasks. We previously used shared Excel with tabs, so it was similar and really works for us.

With the Project - we use it for the complete IT tasks tracking. But web version was lacking, desktop app was sometimes a bit cumbersome, we wanted it to really pretify it. So while we like Gant graph ability to display a baseline, we prefer to do our screenshots in the Timeline view. But - placing and moving stuff around is cumbersome too, as it automatically tries to rearrange tasks.

So we have been really waiting for the project Roadmap, becuase we were looking for some simple means of presentation to the management. What a disappointment Roadam was. We simply gave up on that.

I have seen some news on the new reworked Project, as well as its ability to link to Planner, or something like that. I don't even breath and waiting to give our team a try there. I myself prefer good/nice design, as well as a simplicity. That's wha I also like Planner. Keeping things simple requires a lot of thoughts, and some ppl might not just realise it, how difficult is to keep things in balance :)

@Brian-Smith 

Before deciding and recommending one or another solution that requires time for setting up system, migrating data and training users (despite actual cost of licencing) we need to understand system deeply to know what potential limitation might be reached after one year and of course actual roadmap from system owners - what features will be supported.

For example:

Problem: We considering solution for teams and personal lists for daily task planning and reporting for management reasons. To see how the day looked. We need all task to stay and be findable in future.

Today I got idea that we might use separate bucked list for each date. So I did googling investigation to check if it possible and for how long. Instead official and clear table (Like i used to see in SharePoint on premise) i found this forum :-). It's not clear what is outdated and solved, what is not.