Planner needs to function better with Microsoft Flow/ Power Automate

Copper Contributor

Planner could be so much more useful if the API that works with Power Automate (formerly called Flow) were better.  What is the point of just being able to let me know there's a task.  How about I can create tasks IN Power Automate.  That would be useful.  Sure, I can create one now but it limits me to nothing more than I think it is naming it and maybe assigning it but the meat of the items is inaccessible.

 

Imagine a teacher (like myself a homeschool teacher with little time) wants to have assignments that re-create.  We do a lot of repetitive work but my students (aka my children) need new assignments so they actually do the work.  So week after week if I want to use Microsoft I have to create each new item.  (Classroom is grossly deficient as well in many areas).  That's a lot of wasted time.

 

What if I could create a TEMPLATE item and then just have a Flow er ah Power Automate that grabs my template and makes a new one and puts in new dates.  BOOM.  Done and all I had to do was get my kid er ah student to mark their task complete.  BOOM mom's er ah teacher's work is much easier to do.


But Microsoft is way behind the eight ball compared to other companies and how they handle task planners.  I think just about every other company let's me create things for my kids/students in a lot less time.  But...I as a former Microsoft Partner am loyal to Microsoft and thankful for the education pack we can purchase and use so we are trying to stick with Microsoft only...but Microsoft you sure make it difficult when you're so far behind.

 

Take Wunderlist.  It was wunderful!  You bought it and killed it and replaced it with To Do which STILL can't do everything Wunderlist did.  You've had plenty of time to get this right.  But you still haven't.  It is better.  Finally I can at least login to my To Do and see both my personal Microsoft live based To Dos and my O365 based To Dos without having to logout and login each time with a different login but it's still clunky.  

 

While we're at it Sharepoint is still lagging behind.  It started as competition for Lotus Notes and I haven't been a Notes programmer now for 23 years and yet Sharepoint STILL hasn't been able to be what Notes was.  Sharepoint lists are still too cumbersome and limited.  You can't do a lookup from one List in one sharepoint site to another even if those sites are in the same hub?  WTH?  

 

Come on Microsoft, we expect better of you.  You have more money than all these other start ups...but you seem to be not able to handle innovations very well.  

 

OneNote is still lagging behind and still having sync issues daily.  The web version has a few cool new features like the math ability but it lacks some of the greatness of the desktop app and the two seem like almost completely different apps.  Tables in OneNote are pretty much just to format things because there's no real functionality in them.  How hard would it be to use excel inside OneNote without the klugy embedding of it.  And on embedding why not all OneNote to embed an actual web site!  That would be fantastic!  There's so many possibility of OneNote especially when working with students but limiting it to copy and paste and links only kinda kills it.  Notion is up and coming and a fantastic looking app, simple, powerful, a few problems with it and it's tables but if they get those things improved they will blow OneNote out of the water.  Meanwhile OneNote just sits there like your old unmarried aunt getting older every year and not doing anything about it thinking she's so pretty that one day her prince will come but day after day, month after month year after year she's just getting old, fat and ugly.  

 

Come on Microsoft....step it up.  

2 Replies

@smsdavis Hi, For now, its simple to use third-party apps to create the Plans from Template (Even within the same O365 Group). 

@Santhosh Balakrishnan So what I'm hearing you say is.  "Microsoft is releasing inferior products with extreme limitations so that you can spend even more money paying a third party for the functionality that should exist in the original product that was released."

 

Cause all the third party apps I've seen to solve Microsoft problems cost even more money per month.  For a widowed, homeschooling mother of 6, we can't be paying $10 a month per user per add in to give us the same functionality some other tool includes because they made a complete product.