Planner / Teams / to do / OneNote

Brass Contributor

Dear MS team. 

I have been using (and loving) MS Teams for some time now. But I have been using OneNote for eons (as the best app MS have ever made, in my opinion).

The problem is they do not (at least not on a Mac) talk to each other. 

 

In the new 'unified' system of Teams, planner, and tasks being integrated, we need to have OneNote link into that too. Onenote has a tag for 'to do' so it would make logical sense that creating this 'to do' in OneNote was import into our todo, task, or/and planner tools too. 

If the new todo feature is looking to import tasks from todo, and planner/teams, then it must include OneNote also to be useful.

 

In the windows environment creating a OneNote todo used to (i can't vouch if it still does) create a task in outlook.  This doesn't happen in the mac environment. So a OneNote todo is an isolated tag. The only way of using this is to copy/paste (which is inefficient) or use OneNote search by tag - which detaches this todo's from the rest of O365.

 

Please:

  1. Upskill the mac tools to equal windows features.
  2. Link Onenote to dos with 'todo', planner/teams

 

Thank you. Keep up the fantastic development!

9 Replies

+1 to @PaulB175 's request. I'm just learning how to use Teams with the goal of finding out if I want to push my division to switch to Teams. If all of the features are not truly integrated, I'm going to keep being unpleasantly surprised and not sold on why we shouldn't just manage work through email and OneDrive.

+1 @lauraleeadams . You take notes in Meeting on OneNote and send those to the Planner for a consolidated list of all actions in your name. Works like ticketing system. Panner then reminds about upcoming tasks and helps focus. Just visually knowing what needs to be done is a pain worth solving.

@digvijay How do you send those notes to planner? I urgently need this feature.

@MichaelBLN You can try the Power App named "Meeting Capture" for free. This offers one way sync. Just creates the Planner tasks from OneNote to Planner.
https://apps.powerapps.com/play/053a308c-5b19-4948-a4cf-1b307ac8f6b4?source=portal&screenColor=rgba(...

 

If you wish to use 2-way sync - track the Planner task status from OneNote, use third party app

https://blog.jijitechnologies.com/how-to-create-office365-task-from-your-notes-in-onenote

 

@Santhosh Balakrishnan thank you. That is pretty cool.

Waiting for years. OneNote has no progress at all and integration of Planner into Todo and Outlook tasks is half way. It made me believe MS gave up OneNote and Planner and the relevant integrations. It is more like an 'app' developed by a third party rather than a real software.

@Santhosh Balakrishnan  Thanks for posting. Just to inform you that the first link, to Power Apps, did not work.

@PaulB175 

 

I am looking at Power Automate and only see three One Note options (new page, new section, new section group) for triggering a flow. Unfortunately neither trigger is "creation of a to do tag".  If they added this option, then I can see how Power Automate would be a solution. 

Meetings exist to discuss different topics, provide context and information, and set action points. In other words, some sentences in meeting notes reflect actual tasks, but not all sentences do.

For my entire professional life, I have been looking for a solution where you can highlight a phrase or part of a phrase, right-click, and turn this into a task object that is picked up by professional project management tools.

To date, I have not found it. OneNote comes closest, with its To Do tags that you can query. Like you, I am a OneNote fan because it really can help project team communication. However, as you say, the integration with the rest of Office is haphazard at best. And the integration with a serious project management tool like MS Project Online is non-existent.

To me, having both OneNote and MS Project in their suite of software means that Microsoft sits on gold in this space. Sadly, it looks that they haven't figured it out yet that project managers need their scheduling tool AND meeting note tool to be integrated...

 

Projects need scheduling AND communication to work. Meetings lead to insights which change the schedule all the time. Not integrating MS Project with OneNote To Do tags is a great opportunity being missed.